FYI
I've had no end of trouble with a rebuilt laptop and reached the stage of pulling my hair out trying to capture avi from vid camera without dropping frames and major jerky stuttering results.
I read all the sticky forums 2 or 3 times, check and substituted programmes and cables, defraged, deleted software, cleanups, you name it...all the moves recommended...all to no avail
In desperation I simply hooked my vid camera up to laptop with iLINK cable, booted Premier Pro which I use for all vids and believe it or not, fired up the remote storage hard drive connected with a high speed USB and guess what? Bingo, captured all vids as easy as pie with no dropped frames.
I simply didn't think the USB would handle the data especially after routing in out and round-about through the laptop etc....but there you go.
Try it, it worked for me.