I just got a Canon ZR-500 DV for Christmas. I tried putting some of the video onto my PC and I'm having problems. I bought the firewire cable and my pc already had the port for it. However, when I turn my camcorder on the pc doesn't always recognize it. It'll only find it in one of about every 8 times. I got it to work a few times and was able to get some video clips onto my pc. I'm just wondering why it's not being recognized everytime I turn the camcorder to Play. Would it be a problem with my pc as it sometimes has problems recognizing my usb cable for me to download my digital camera as well? Any ideas on how to fix this? Oh ya, and I have Windows XP on my pc.

If your pc is not well looked after things like this can happen. Hard to be more helpfull with the information available.

Might be an idea to check the f wire card (if not on motherboard) is not wobbly in the slot and securely plugged in.