Tried 3 cables: all work fine on the laptop, none work on the desktop

I've uninstalled the OHCI 1394 controller from Device Manager and rebooted. Windows correctly identifies it, and Device Manager shows it operating properly.

I've also tried forcing Windows to use the Microsoft OHCI driver rather than the Via driver. Nothing doing.

The thing that's odd to me is that it had been working fine for years now -- and as recently as this weekend. I can't figure out why it would suddenly quit on me. If anyone else has experienced anything like this, let me know please. Meanwhile, I'll be plowing through the MS Knowledgebase.

You could update to the latest 4 in 1 drivers from via

And like Spot said, remove the card from device manager and reboot.

Otherwise It looks like you will have to do a complete format and fresh install as a last resort to ensure a fresh registry and autodetect of your devices.

That way all corrupted files, viruses and spyware are gone and windows has to start fresh.

Whoops, I saw your reply to Spot after I posted.
If Windows see it and says it is working, try plugging only 1 device in and testing it. It may be the monitor or deck acting up rather than the firewire card.

Do you show any other 1394 driver in the control panel? Or are there other 1394 connectors coming out of some other card? I had a second 1394 controller on my ATI All-in-Wonder 8500DV display card, and it conflicted with the 1394 controller on my motherboard.

You could also try downloading and installing the 1394 patch from Microsoft. You can uninstall it if you find out you don't want it (it is completely reversable). Here's the link to the thread with all the descriptions:

Firewire 1394 Solutions

Thanks for all the help. I'll try the patch and post back.

Does anyone know if that patch was actually included in SP2 (Win XP)?

I have something similiar happening with my lan card on one of my computers. When I plugged my new external firewire drive into a slot on a firewire pci card my pci lan card suddenly started dissapearing and reappearing.

I took the cards out rebooted the computer, shut it off again then put the cards in, this time the lan pci above the firewire and now they seem to co-exist well.

So if you've put a new pci card in lately when you started noticing this problem my fix might help.

Good luck!

"Nickle gets the Cigar...." there's a Groucho Marx joke in there somewhere....

I went home and tried the XP patch, and at first thought, "Success!" when I could read my firewire drive from my desktop. Ooops, wait a moment, no I can't. I could see the drive in Explorere, but could not open any of the folders. I kept getting a Windows message that said "Network Resource Not Available."

A few nasty expletives later, I realized that because I had reinstalled the OHCI card, XP turned on the 1394 Networking, which I had always disabled before. My firewall was keeping me from accessing this "network subnet" which was really just my OHCI card. Turned off 1394 networking and "Hurrah!" I could now open and read the files on the firewire drive.

Oh, wait a minute, no I can't. I fired up Vegas and turned on my DV deck and **poof** my firewire drive disappears, and Vegas tells me my DV deck is also unavailable. After some experimenting (and even nastier expletives), I have discovered that the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in the #$#@!!!! firewire jack of my Panasonic DV1000 deck. It must have gotten yanked when I was moving things around last weekend.

Sure enough, I pulled my little Sony one-chipper out of mothballs, and everything's right as rain: firewire drive works, and so does Vegas external monitor preview.

I'm not particularly happy that of all the problems that could have caused this, it had to be the most expensive to fix, but at least I found the culprit.

Many thanks to all who helped.