Firewire Video Camera detection is intermittent

Does anyone know why both of my video cameras will no longer be recognized upon plugging into firewire and powering up? It used to work just fine. Since both cameras work the same way I concluded it is not the fault of the cameras. I had two firewire cords and so purchased a brand new expensive one today and it didn't change the operation either. I have an Asus P5B Mobo with a firewire card in a PCI slot. Win XP Home (SP2) states the firewire card is working properly. I tried uninstalling firewire card in device manager and reinstalling/updating driver all to no avail. The camera(s) are not recognized last night for hours. I come back in the morning and it works. I am about to give up, BUT this is my video machine!!

I had this problem with an old camcorder, tried different cables, different mobos, it was so intermittent. It turned out that the mini-firwire port on the camcorder had been 'stretched' slightly due to repeated use and the contact was not always good. To me it looked fine but I had a pro look at it (camcorder service engineer) Since then Ive moved to a hard-drive based camcorder which is just USB, apparently the shape of the mini-usb cable is much less prone to stretching/deforming the socket on the camcorder.

Well that was my experience at least, hope u find a solution