FIrewire device/networking problem

[inertiascience]

Hello everyone!
I purchased a Soundblaster Audigy Platinum sound card, with advanced HD (that thing that goes in a drive bay).

I began using the firewire port on the Advanced HD for a firewire network with my laptop.

I already had a network set up, ethernet, to a linksys router, which connected the computers to the internet and each other. I wanted the firewire because I have two computers side by side and often shared files between the two; I needed more speed out of it.

So I bought the cable, plugged it into both computers, reenabled the 1394 connection on both computers (had it disabled before) and it set itself up; the icon in the lower right said "Found new hardware 1394 host" or something similar.

I used the connection steadily for about a week, when I noticed that there was a problem with it.

It turned out that when the 1394 cord was jiggled a little the connection was severed between both computers. To solve the issue, I just moved the cord out of the way of anything that moved.

This solved it for awhile, till I started noticing the connection going out randomly. I upgraded the drivers in the audigy, didnt solve it, and I noticed that in my desktop (the one with the audigy) the 1394 connection was no longer appearing in the network connections window.

I opened Device manager in the system control panel, and it showed the icon for "OHCI Compliant 1394 Host Controller" with a yellow exclamation mark over it. I double clicked the icon and opened up the properties window, the device status window read:

This device cannot start. (Code 10)

Click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter for this device.

I ran the troubleshooter, and it wasnt able to solve the problem. Can anyone help? The connection on my laptop seems fine.

ALSO!!

Im having another problem.
I tryed to revert to the old way the computers were networked, but on my desktop, the network wizard kept giving me an error at the end, and on the laptop, it never gives me the option to change the connection to my network (I can still choose the connection to the internet, the place where you cange the connection to the other computers never shows up in the wizard).

Please help! I really need this network up again, its a headache trying to find a floppy disk to transfer stuff between them, and to waste 650 mb burnable CD's for teeny 10 mb files.




-PS my laptop's specs are in my profile, the desktop's are in my sig.

[inertiascience]

A year has passed and Im still having problems with this. I managed to somehow get everything back to the point where I could see the icon for the network connection in the Network Connections window on both computers.

The problem is that, on the desktop, the connection looks like its always connected. Vice versa on the laptop. No amount of cord jiggling or reconnecting has changed this.

Please help!

[inertiascience]

Upon installing XP SP2 on both computers, the desktop computer no longer has an icon for my firewire connection in the Network Connections window, and my laptop constantly says that it is connected to the network, when it is unplugged.

Please help!

[inertiascience]

anyone?