I agree with Lemerise, definitely try the various resets, and I'd probably even wipe the drive and reinstall the OS to rule out software entirely. I would try various Firewire components as well, to make sure the problem is not with the specific device you are plugging in. If you only have one Firewire component, try connect it to another computer to verify that it works.
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Does your laptop have power-related issues as well? I ask because I've seen a few machines that had flaky DC-in/sound boards, and one of the symptoms that they were having problems was that they were not recognizing Firewire devices...it would give a message indicating that a device was plugged in, but then it would not see that device, and replacing the DC-in/sound board corrected the problem. Anyway, that's probably a longshot, but I thought I'd mention it.
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Does your laptop have power-related issues as well? I ask because I've seen a few machines that had flaky DC-in/sound boards, and one of the symptoms that the computers were having problems was that they were not recognizing Firewire devices...it would give a message indicating that a device was plugged in, but then it would not see that device, and replacing the DC-in/sound board corrected the problem. Anyway, that's probably a longshot, but I thought I'd mention it.
I agree with Lemerise, definitely try the various resets, and I'd probably even wipe the drive and reinstall the OS to rule out software entirely. I would try various Firewire components as well, to make sure the problem is not with the specific device you are plugging in. If you only have one Firewire component, try connect it to another computer to verify that it works.
Does your laptop have power-related issues as well? I ask because I've seen a few machines that had flaky DC-in/sound boards, and one of the symptoms that they were having problems was that they were not recognizing Firewire devices...it would give a message indicating that a device was plugged in, but then it would not see that device, and replacing the DC-in/sound board corrected the problem. Anyway, that's probably a longshot, but I thought I'd mention it.