PC not recognizing firewire input

[rdc4439]

I am having problems getting my PC to recoginze my firewire input, and am getting frustrated.

I am working with:

• Dell Latitude Laptop with firewire board built into motherboard.
  JVC DVF21 video camera (and have also attempted a SONY Handcam).
  Windows 2000 (cannot upgrade to XP because my company software will only work on 2000).
  I downloaded the lastest DirectX - version 9.0

I have been on the phone with Dell customer support for probably 40 hours over the last 3 weeks, and I have them stumped. I have replaced the motherboard, firewire cable, tried 2 different cameras, and reformatted my hard drive and started from scratch - at Dell's urging - still no relief.

I cannot get any help from JVC.

When I plug the firewire cable into my laptop - absolutely nothing happens. I go to device manager - and the IEEE1394 Bus Host Controller (Texas Instruments) says it is working properly.

Can someone tell me what I might be missing here?.

Thanks for your help in advance.
Rich

[rdc4439]

Now Dell is telling me that the Firewire card may be in conflict with other IRQ settings????

Does this make sense?

[The village idiot]

I know you don't want to spend any more money, but you could try this:

Disable the onboard firewire, and put it a cheap CompUSA brand PCMCIA card. That card should have a sticker that says VIA OHCI V.xxx. That card works very well for me. It is about $40 USD.