I have a Cannon XHA1 and have always been able to capture my footage. However, today I am getting an error that says.

" Can't activate recorder. Try resetting camera. "
I have powered down and restarted and I have removed the battery and restarted.
I have also pressed the reset button on the camera.

....any idea's?

Open/close Premiere capture window, Open/close Premiere itself. Is your camera detected by the OS? If not, perhaps the firewire port is not functioning properly.

Make sure the camera is set to HDV and not auto.
First connect camera to computer
make sure windows sees the camera
Start up Premiere.
Make sure your capture settings are set to hdv.
Never connect or disconnect the camera to the pc while the power of the camera is on, this can cause the firewire to blow up in the camera.
If you change settings on the camera disconnect from computer.

+1 on Ann's (as always) well-thought out and complete comment. Plus, I have had problems in the past with the firewire connection on the XHA1, it is fragile and gets hinkey with use. Use a known-good firewire cable (being sure everything is powered down, as Ann mentions, you can blow it up if you try to hot-plug) plug in, power up and see if it will connect with the computer, if not, a little judicious and careful side-to-side wiggle of the cable/camera connection sometimes will work.

I also have a A1, in the past I had some problems with CS3.
I use a good firewire cable, those with a ferriet filter (dont know what they are called in English) and always very carefull plugging the cable into the camera.

I figured it out. The properties setting I used in my set up was not HDV. I had it on some other setting.
Eventhough I did not get this exact answer, Ann's first listed item got me on this.
Thanks for the help.