What A Week - Help !

Drawn by @Ben

My week has been very IT orientated and I blame the Bats and my Cam Corder. Having filmed the Bats I wanted to share my film producing skills with everyone else. I needed a 4 pin Fire wire to transfer my film to my computer its the one thing I hadn't got in my massive collection of wires.So I duly went out and purchased one when I got to Dads I unpacked my laptop and camcorder and ripped the wire out of its packaging. I plugged it all in and it all worked. I could now go next door and transfer my Bat Film and try and upload it to the web.

I got home put the kettle on unpacked the laptop and the camcorder plugged it all in again and it didn't work. The laptop refused to acknowledge the camcorder was plugged in.

Since then I have been on a quest. Don't laugh you computer whiz kids I went as far this morning of buying a new Fire Wire just in case I had damaged the other one. That didn't work. Eventually I lost the plot and have spent most the morning re-formatting my hard drive and reinstalling windows hoping starting from scratch would enable me to make sure all the right drivers were present and up to date. 

I have now officially given up Windows XP has obviously fallen out with my JVC camcorder and my bats remain on video.

Has anyone got any ideas?