Help me please before Ive pullled ALL my hair out.

I recently bought a sony DCR-HC62E, and am trying to get it to connect to my Dell laptop running Windows vista home premium edition.

Facts so far.
1. Used to have an older sony camcorder which I was able to download the DV footage to the laptop via ieee 1394 4-4 pin cable. No issues
2. After I got the new camera I was unable to get the computer to detect a camera was connected, or the camera detecting it was connected to the computer, i.e DV in/out was not on the display.
3. Took camera, cable and software to sony shop, and eventually figured out the cabble I had was damaged, so got a new cable and they managed to get it working with ony of thheir sony laptops no problems.
4. With the new cable I can get the camera to know its connected, i.e DV in/out appears on the camera LCD display. But I cannot get any software on the computer to detect a camera is connected
5 The IEEE 1394 integrated card appears to be working as the driver is their and when I uninstall it and search for new hardware it detects it.

Can someone please offer any advice as to how I might be able to resolve it, or to carry out further checks. Only solution Dell has offered is to restore the laptop to it's original factory settings. But this is a real pain as I would loose loads of data, and have to re-install all my software. Only going to do this if all else fails.

If you need any more information just ask.

Thanks,

did you get anywhere with this? I am having a very similar problem with my dell and a canon that works fine on other comps.

An old post from 2008, what is the spec of your Dell, how old is it, are you using Windows XP or Vista? Did you get any software with that Canon, I don't use a Canon camcorder but they used to insist on you having to use their own software to get the camera/camcorder to talk to the computer first. Is that still the way they work now? How are you connecting it to your computer, USB or Firewire? What make/model is it?

Its a canon md205 that works fine without software on another computer, so I don't think canon is the problem. (?)

I am using a firewire 800 belkin card in my dell inspiron 1545 laptop, then a 4 pin to 9 pin firewire cable to connect up.

Windows vista and premeier pro.

I think it may be the firewire cable, the 4 to 9 thing. The firewire card is fine, it comes up in devices as the right port. But when i plug it all together nothing happens.
I'm wondering if despite the firewire card supposedly being reverse compatible, the camera just doesn't like the new firewire....?

Premier Pro doesnt have my make of camera in its list indevice control either.

Any other ideas about what it could be? I've looked on the canon site for drivers but they don't have any and a computer expert told me the driver should install automatically on any computer.

Did you try another Firewrire cable just to make sure either the cable or one or both of the connectors are damaged or busted or is that the same cable the you were using on your other computer that did work? 4 pin to 9 pin is that correct? Do you mean 4 pin to 6 pin? I'm not an expert on Firewire cards but if the socket or sockets at the rear of the card are fried will the card still show up as working ok in the Device Manager.