I wonder if anyone has any advice to correct a self inflicted injury on my XM2?

Earlier this month, I was moving my PC equipment around a bit and inadvertently plugged my firewire cable in the wrong way up into the PC. Yes I know it has a bevel on the bottom to ensure you can't do this, but I was sure the bevel was on the top, and I was stretching around the back of the PC, and it felt like it went in with a bit of persuasion!!

Anyway the upshot of my stupidity is that the PC cannot "see" my XM2 when I plug in the firewire cable. Another camera is fine, so that rules out the PC side and the firewire cable. The only response from Canon service centre is "Send it in and we will carry out a service for £ 156". However they won't confirm that this will fix my problem, but they will give me a quote before doing any additional work (like fix the problem I sent the camera in for!).

Before I send my XM2 away, does anyone have any ideas what kind of damage I have done. It works fine apart from this, so the mainboard has not been fried, but I cannot capture any of my footage at all.

Appreciate any advice you can give (apart from "don't plug your firewire cable in the wrong way up", as I 've learnt that one already!!

What would I do? Everything possible to avoid sending in the camera for servicing.

Computers are finicky and I wouldn't be convinced yet that the computer is not having a problem. Sometimes my computer instantly acknowledges the presence of the camera, sometimes it needs a second try.

Try connecting the camera to someone elses computer, or buy a new firewire card to try out. I would even remove the old card from the motherboard and try reinstalling it.

Try plugging in the cable to the firewire card before the camera is turned on, and then try it when the camera is already running.

Try plugging it in to all the inputs on the firewire card.

If your software has options for inputting from a Sony or a Canon, make sure it still is set for Canon.

Also, I would decide never to hook up my camera to a firewire again, and use another cheap camera to input my tapes, which I decided to do this last week after I got the REMOVE CASSETTE message for the first time after hitting the REWIND button. No more rewinding (and therefore no more connecting my camera to the computer via firewire) for my CANON. A second cheap camera is less $ than a CANON repair bill.

Thanks Galen, I'll give all the other options a go, before I pack up the camera and send it off.

I have just acquired another PC with firewire card, so I will give that a try this afternoon.

Many thanks for your suggestions.