Firewire card works sporadically

[Alex Taylor]

I have a brand new firewire problem. My firewire card will only recognize my camera half the time, it seems. I tried for ages last night trying to figure out why it wasn't working, and this morning I tried plugging my camera in and all of a sudden it worked.

I don't think it's the card itself, because it was originally in another computer and I moved it to mine, thinking it was the built-in firewire on my motherboard that wasn't working (it also did this half-the-time thing).

It's not my camera, because it works fine on several other computers, using the same cable (even using the same firewire card in the case of the other computer in my house).

I'm absolutely boggled as to what this could be. I'm running XP Pro with an ADS Pyro BasicDV card. 1 network card that's on a different IRQ than the firewire card, with the Texas Instruments drivers. My camera's a Canon ZR20.

I just know it's some ridiculous and obscure problem that will end up providing one more reason for me to give in to temptation and buy a Powerbook.

[Glenn Chan]

You could check to see if it's an IRQ conflict. Go run-->msinfo32 and go into hardware --> IRQ sharing/conflicts. If it's sharing an IRQ you can try disabling the other devices or better yet just moving your firewire card (or the other device) into another PCI slot.

That's my guess anyways.

[Alex Taylor]

Thanks Glenn.. but the card is on IRQ 16 by itself, and I've already tried moving it to a slot below my video card, away from my network card. Still behaves the same. It seems to be working fine today, maybe it has to be sunny outside!

[Arnaldo Paixao]

Go to control panel/system and check if the card has an yellow exclamation point next to it.
Windows sometimes unistalls mine. Why? Go figure...
Right click on it and uninstall. Switch off (no restart). Switch on and check if the yellow exclamation point is no longer there.
Now it should work.

Good luck
Arnaldo

[Alex Taylor]

Arnaldo,

Like I said, there is no hardware conflict. I've moved the card and disabled the network cards for awhile.. it's a very odd problem. For instance, I just tried it now and it worked fine. If I leave it for a few hours though, it won't work again.

[Arnaldo Paixao]

Wich motherboard?

My ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe won't recognize my camera through the built in firewire port.

Is your power good? Meaning, is your psu able to cope with what you have installed.

Hope you can sort it out. This issues are VERY frustrating.

Good luck,
Arnaldo

[Alex Taylor]

It's an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe. My PSU is 420W max which should be plenty.

It does have a built-in firewire port but I'm not using that anymore.. it's just a PCI card right now.

I think it literally works half the time. I 'll plug it in in the morning and it'll work fine, then a few hours later it won't. The other thing I noticed is, Premiere freezes a lot with the camera on.

Luckily I don't have any projects in the imminent future, so I can do without firewire. It's just frustrating that I don't know what's causing it. My kingdom for a Powerbook ;)

[Kent Diamond]

I have noticed occasional problems when my camera is attached and powers down or goes into a sleep mode. One of the drivers somewhere has a problem with this. To avoid this I attached the camera, do the transfers I need, then detach the camera.

When the camera does not work I have tried unplugging the cable, wait a few seconds then plug it back in.

A last resort is to turn off the camera, unplug the camera, restart the machine, reconnect the camera, and turn on the camera. It's a pain but the camera works after that.

Good luck!

[Sean McHenry]

I know you have probably thought of this but - have you checked your "hibernation" or "sleep" functions on the PC. In the Power tab I believe. Make sure you don't have it set to something odd and that it is set to "Always On" and no screensaver, all the usual stuff.

I set mine for always on, never hibernate or sleep, no screensavers, never let the disk spin down, etc.

Basically, if it's on, everything is running full tilt.

Sean

[K. Forman]

Is it possible that you got a crimp in your cable? If you have a wire that is broken, it would only work if the wire was making contact. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this. Try a new cable.

[Alex Taylor]

I finally figured it out! I'm posting it here in hopes that somebody with a similar problem will be spared hours of headaches.

It turned out to be a device conflict, just not an obvious one. I took out all non-essential PCI cards and the firewire card worked fine, flawlessly every time after restarts. It turns out it was my ATI TV Wonder card (which I barely ever use anyway) that was causing a conflict. It wasn't showing up in Windows, but it was definitely the culprit.