You say you have a firewire cable so I'm guessing you realize there is a difference between the firewire cable and the USB cable. You cannot transfer video with the USB cable.
What is your operating system XP, Vista or something else?
When you plug in the firewire cable to the camera and the computer and then turn on the camera does anything happen at all? I cannot recall the exact message, but you should see a small pop-up in the taskbar that something about detecting a DV device.
If you don't see it there may be a variety of problems, but I would still open a video capture application to see if the software "sees" the camera. Windows Movie Maker will work, but I use another product called Scenalzyer. You can download a free copy of Scenalzyer at
www.scenalyzer.com. The demo copy is fully functional, but it will leave a "watermark" on your video. You'll need to pay for it to capture video without the watermark.
Assuming you try one of these software packages and you do not have any success I would do the following: right click on My computer and select properties, now select the Hardware tab and finally click on Device Manager. Look through the list and see if you can find something like 1394 Host Controller. If you find it, does it have any exclamation points or question marks next to it?
If none of this helps let me know and we can try some other things. Lastly, I want you to know that I'm not paid for this. It's a strange hobby know, but I like helping when I can. If you find any of this helpful (even if it does not ultimately solve your problem) I hope you will rate this positively. Thanks and good luck.
