Firewire doesn't work with Vista

T

The Living Legend

Member
Since installing Vista my firewire ports don't work. Device manager says they are working properly but when I try to capture video from a camcorder I can't and when I connect a firewire card reader nothing shows up in My Computer.

Firewire worked fine with XP. I have posted on loads of forums with no solution so I am getting desperate!

Hope someone can help.

My rig is:

ABIT IC7-G, P4 3.2 Northwood, 2 X 512 MB OCZ Dual Channel Gold PC3700, Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro AGP, Energmax Liberty 620, Samsung 226BW widescreen monitor, 40 GB Seagate Barracuda, 80 GB Seagate Barracuda, SATA: 250GB Hitachi Deskstar, 500GB Seagate Barracuda, Sony DVD-ROM drive, 6 PCI slots, 3 X S-FLEX 120mm Fan 800 RPM.

Catalyst 7.4/ Intel 875P drivers.
 
With hidden devices shown I get the same as if they are hidden: both IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers are there.

OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host controller
Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host controller

Properties shows This device is working properly in both cases.
 
I have removed all the PCI cards from the machine. I have installed the INTEL driver for the chipset. All seems OK in device manager - but the firewire devices aren't detected. I am pretty sure it's not the devices themselves - they worked OK before I rebuilt the machine. I tested the camcorder the other day in a DVD recorder and the DV connection was made fine.

One slightly odd thing was when I rebuilt this machine I put a new floppy drive in. The drive light had been on permanently when the machine was on. I eventually disabled it in the BIOS but the light stayed on. One of my CDRW drive drives didn't work on rebuild - it appeared in My Computer but if you put a disc in you couldn't read the files. You could boot from this drive though.

I just removed the floppy drive cable from the mobo and can now access files from the CDRW so there might have been a conflict. Still can't access firewire devices, even though device manager says they are working properly. Weird
 
Sounds like you've got something going on in the hardware-level.

I'd disconnect and re-connect all SATA/IDE cables, PSU Cords, and just about everything short of the CPU.
 
Success! I removed the temperamental CDRW drives and attached a memory card into the firewire card reader - it showed up in My Computer! I'm not sure if the drive itself is dodgy or I had the wrong jumper settings - I will investigate this further.

Thanks for your help and last post, Guru - I wouldn't have considered removing the suspect drive if you hadn't disconnecting hardware. I posted the problem on quite a few forums and got little or nothing back - you got on it'd straightaway. I'd like to shake your hand, Sir! Regards, Legend.
 
Firewire drive and Vista x32 SP1 - Doesn't Work

I cannot get my WD 1TB external Firewire drive to work. Never has amd I have had WD swap it out for 2 other units. Did Microsoft disable the functionality ?

HELP!


The Living Legend said:
With hidden devices shown I get the same as if they are hidden: both IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers are there.

OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host controller
Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host controller

Properties shows This device is working properly in both cases.
Click to expand...
 
Nope, they haven't. I got a firewire WD 1TB external myself. Make sure you got the latest updates + Vista SP1 if you don't got it. If it isnt working, with it on hold down the power button until it powers off. If powering it back on doesnt help, safely remove it if it shows up as a device, turn it off again, restart the computer, and disconnect the firewire. Power the drive back on again and connect the firewire with it on.

To be honest I have had some issues with it. My problem is that unless you manually turn the drive off it automatically turns off/on with the computer. There were times where I would have it on and needed to reboot to find the computer would lock up as Vista was starting whenever the drive was powered on. Vista SP1 fixed this for me however.

CG's right to some degree though. While the support is there, I still get issues with it delaying reboots with it on, it actually read/writes slower sometimes than some of my usb drives, and occasionally I get into a situation like yourself where it won't work and after unplugging/re-plugging the power and data cables a couple times it starts working again. I'd recommend if you can use USB instead for the connection. I use firewire on mine, but thats because I got too many other usb devices plugged-in.
 
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Honestly, since SP1 Vista has great Firewire support. My external drives have dual USB/Firewire support and Firewire is just soooooooo much faster.

The only thing missing from Vista now is support for Firewire networks, which has been killed off. It's pretty much a dead technology anyway these days; so it's not that big of a deal.
 
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