thanks to german stefan in france? after reading your response and some other digging round i pulled out the factory installed firewire card and replaced it into the other slot, (to prevent irq problems?) apon rebooting xp recognised the card and then the 1998 sharp mini dv camera, i have been able to use the very easy windows movie maker to download tapes onto the hard disc and put togther a few experimental movies. even burning them to cdrw with the built in burner , i'm all for bundling as many software applications together as possible (thou i think i would like the choice to save projects in other than the windows special format???, just a beginner here) i say half fixed as it seems the computer only sometimes allows the camera to download info, think it may be a poor connection at the front 4 wire firewire port... also my long standing problem with xp is becoming more of an issue, that is it only recognises the first disc put in the combi drive and later changes of the disc sometimes require rebooting the system, a real pain odd too because nero disc information notes the change but xp doesn't...i see others have this problem so i'm hoping sp1 will address it eric e long winded today