Firewire camcorder and XP

I have tried to plug my camcorder into my PC via the firewire (2 seperate
cards) and it is no longer being found. No little balloon is appearing to
indicate that it has been detected. I am not certain if I the last time I
tried this I had SP2 on or not. I have borrowed a friends camcorder and it
too was not detected so I am assuming it is not the camcorder that is at
fault.

I have also tried my camcorder on a friends latop (also windows xp sp2).
This wasn't found either. I have an ipod which is still working OK through
the firewire so I know that the hardware is still working. I have tried 3
different cables for the camcorder to know effect.

I am at that point where I am going to perform a fresh install of windows xp
in the hope this sorts the problem (I have already tried various tricks such
as replacing the drivers with SP1 versions). I have also noted that I have
a error with the SM Bus Master not having the necessary drivers installed.
Could this have any affect on the camcorder? It is an asus motherboard with
a SiS648 chip so the intel inf update does not help. I have put on the
latest chipset update for the chip but it didn't make that error go away.

If anyone has any advice I would appreciate it.