[threepm]

I will attempt to explain the situation here:

I was having firewire issues pre-christmas... so I upgraded my system to a MSI P45 Motherboard and Intel Core 2 Duo 3.16 Processor 4GB of Ram...

Firewire problem still exists:

I will be watching youtube, or playing a game, or (most importantly) working with digital audio recording and audio goes away. No error message no BSOD no system hault nothing. Just as if someone unplugged the device in the middle of something and yet the system keeps chugging along as if there is audio still playing. So I have to unplug the firewire cable, and plug it back in for it to "re-recognize".

Here is what steps I have done already:
-Formated HD 3 times.. Fresh installs of Vista 32bit also tried Windows 7.
-All Updates are applied both OS and Driver Updates for Audio Interface.
-Disabled onboard Firewire and instaleld a Texas Instruments PCI Firewire card as recommended by the manufacturer.
-Purchased a new Firewire interface (originally had Presonus Firebox)
-Purchased new Firewire Cables
-Installed new power supply in tower in case of it being a power supply issue.

And still the exact same result.

Please help me O.B.1 You're my last hope.

[fairnooks]

The only thing that seems to remain common is the OS. Have you tried XP? I say that because empirically, I've found that firewire on Vista, and disappointingly, on Win7RC, is flakey. I've been trying to use firewire with external hard drives on both Vista and 7RC and the results are the same so far-terrible performance. As usual, XP does not experience these performance problems (mostly write speed related).

So from that experience so far, I'd want to try anything firewire-related on an XP system for a while and see if the problem went away or was still there before looking further.