Big Firewire Problem

Hi, I need someones urgent help. I was having problem with my firewire port, it was saying that it could not list in the system profiler so i tried the below , which i found on another forum. Didnt work so i reversed what i did. Now when i turn on my mac it says - "System extensions cannot be found" I fear i may have now created a bigger problem. Can someone please help. Thanks.
The problem is with the firewire. If you have exactly the same thing as me (start lasting longer than 5 minutes AND Firewire given as defective in the "system profiler" then do this:
Go to:
(Harddrive)> System> Library> Extensions
Find Everything That looks like IOFireWire *. kext
For Me, It Was the FOLLOWING:
IOFireWireAVC.kext
IOFireWireFamily.kext
IOFireWireIP.kext
IOFireWireSBP2.kext
IOFireWireSerialBusProtocolTransport.kext
Take these files and copy them somewhere else. (Then delete the originals)
Double check files are no longer thesis in (Harddrive)> System> Library> Extensions. If they're gone, Then restart your computer. It "should work great".

What make and model hard drive? Have you tried creating another user in order to see if that works?

Similar Messages

10.4.7 update and external firewire problems with HD corrupion

Dear all,
Advised by Jpfresno I started this new topic about Tiger 10.4.7 update.
I will repeat my post and what was happening 2 weeks ago:
“In 5 years 10.4.7 update was a tragedy for my Powerbook Ti 667. When I update from 10.4.6 to 10.4.7 my 300 GB firewire drive gets corrupted, after repairing it with DiskWarrior and after connecting it to my PowerBook my computer freezes and I must shut it down via powerbutton. Safari also crashes after the update.
I just erase my Hard Drive and after that install 10.4 and update with combo to 10.4.7. But I had the same problems: finder freezes with connected firewire devices and also safari when browsing. I spend a week trying to solve the problem but no luck.
Yesterday and with no firewire devices, 10.4.7 freeze and I have big trouble in order to started my powerbook!!! Even when i insert the 10.4 install DVD it did not detected my HD. Finally I get it to work and install 10.4 and combo update to 10.4.6 and everything works. My external firewire drive and safari. I already diagnose my HD with disk utility, TechTool and directories with Diskwarrior and everything is ok.
I clone my 10.4.6 to firewire, boot from it and everything is working. I let my external drive connected and finder does not freeze.
My conclusion is that the problem is 10.4.7 update. It only give me problems and I was getting crazy with it. 10.4.6 is working good and I do not advice anyone to update to 10.4.7.”
Last week after reinstalling 10.4.6 I started to have HD problems with my Powerbook 667. I did a surface scan with TechTool I it reported bad sector. Then I done a zero disk format but after a second surface scan TechTool also reported bad sector. Then I take the decision to replace my internal HD. I bought a Samsung 40GB Hard Drive and installed it on my PowerBook. Then I have done a clean installation of 10.4.6 with all applications that I need and clone it to my hard drive with Intego Personal Backup software. Everything works on 10.4.6. and external firewire drive.
After that everything is ok. But I decided to test if my problem derivates from 10.4.7 update or from previous HD corruption. Then I install 10.4.7 update on my Internal Hard Drive. Everything is working good but after connecting my external Hard Drive the finder started to freeze!!!!!!!!!. After that I tried cloning HD to external firewire with Intego personal Backup. Everything was working good but when it was finishing the backup process started to give errors!! I started panic. I interrupted the backup process but after and after restart I found something strange with 10.4.7. The system started up, I login but I could not started any application!!!??? All my application died!
Then I have done one more clean installation of tiger and 10.4.6 update.
My conclusions are that the 10.4.7 update causes all the problems that I have on my PowerBook, because I used the same methods and same software/hardware on 10.4.6 and did no have any problem.
This last two weeks were very difficult to me. I tough that these problems do not happen with Apple computers but I was wrong!!! It is very hard to me to deal with it. I always said to my friends that I never had problems with Apple computers. I accept that a hard drive died because the use of it but I can not accept that a system update cause me 2 weeks of hard problems and make me loose precious work information! I always love apple computers and Apple OS but now I am disappointed
If anyone can explain what happen or have a solution for those problems?
Thanks for the comprehension and collaboration.
Best Regards
Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Hi, alsvieira.
There are some things you did not check in all of your troubleshooting:
1. Run the Apple Hardware Test (AHT) that came the affected computer. See my "Apple Hardware Test" FAQ for comprehensive advice on using the AHT in troubleshooting.
2. re: FireWire troubleshooting: Here is some general troubleshooting advice that may help if problems return with your FireWire drive:1. Review the AppleCare Knowledge Base document "What to do if your computer won't recognize a FireWire device".
2. If this problem occurred after installing a recent Mac OS X Update, and you are also unable to mount CDs, DVDs, or disk images perform the steps in this Mac OS X Hints article. This worked under Panther and may also work in certain situations under Tiger.
3. Power-on the FireWire drive before starting up (booting) your Mac.
4. Reset PRAM and NVRAM.
5. Resett the power-management chip in your Mac.
6. Try a different FireWire port. James Wiebe, CEO of WiebeTech, has published FireWire Port Failures in Host Computers and Peripheral Devices, a white paper providing backgroud information and technical analysis concerning the causes of failure for FireWire ports. This may provide additional diagnostic information.
7. Micromat TechTool Pro version 4 can test the FireWire bus in your computer: this tests the bus — not the ports — but if the problem is on the FireWire bus on the logic board, it should reveal it.
8. Check with the manufacturer of your FireWire drive or enclosure to see if any firware updates are available for such.
9. Hopefully, the partition map on the FireWire drive is not damaged. This can happen if the FireWire drive was not Ejected before being disconnected or powered off. If it still refuses to mount, you may need to employ data recovery tools or services: see my "Data Recovery" FAQ.Note that some of the information above is from the "FireWire Problems" chapter of my book, Troubleshooting Mac® OS X.
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Odd network (and Firewire) problems cured by unplugging iMac

I experienced a weird problem with my May 2005 20" iMac G5 running 10.4.2. In October I suddenly lost the ability to connect with one of my computers but not the other. I could connect just fine to the G4 Powerbook running 10.4.3, but could no longer connect to my G4 tower running 10.2.8. The iMac would spend several minutes trying to connect and then the message I got was that the server did not exist or something similar, or sometimes it would say that the version of AFP on the G4 tower was incompatible (I hadn't changed anything). I could still connect from the Powerbook to the G4 tower without any problem so I knew that the tower was OK, and all of the computers were able to print normally through the laser printer on the network. My workaround was to transfer data between the iMac and the tower by going through the Powerbook, but this was a pain since it took twice as long.
Of course I tried rebooting the iMac a number of times, but this did not help. I was thinking it was a software corruption of some sort, and was thinking of wiping the hard drive and reinstalling the whole system (fortunately I hadn't gotten around to doing that yet).
This problem persisted for about 2 months until I also realized that my Firewire ports weren't working either when I tried to hook up a new external Firewire drive. The Firewire ports did not even appear under system profiling. I had a very hard time locating info about troubleshooting the Firewire ports, but finally came across the suggestion to unplug everything from the computer, unplug the iMac from the power and leave it off for a while.
This unplugging cured the Firewire problem and also cured the networking problem!
(I don't know why this worked. I keep the iMac plugged into a UPS to protect it against power outages if that makes any difference.)
(The network configuration: iMac and Powerbook connect to Airport Express via Airport extreme, and the Airport Express is connected to the G4 "Digital Audio" tower through an 8-port Ethernet switch (which also connects to laser printer, a PC, and another very old Mac.))

Chime,
Good news for you. Actually, it's an emphatic YES!
Every ISP I've ever used had fine print explaining that multiple computers require multiple accounts. The interpretation of this is: Every computer you want to have assigned a PUBLIC IP address from your ISP requires it's own account. If you try to get clarification, your ISP will argue it, they want you to pay them more money for unnecessary accounts!
You only need one PUBLIC IP address from the ISP in order to establish internet sharing throughout your house. Your gateway will establish PRIVATE IP addresses for the computers on your home network.
Plug the phone cord into your Base Station (if it has a dial-up modem), the base station then becomes the one PUBLIC computer allowed on your ISP. Configure it to dial out on demand. It becomes the gateway between the internet connection and your internal network.
This is completly legitamate as long as you are sharing over an "in-your-own-home-for-personal-use-only" PRIVATE IP LAN behind your ONE gateway connection.
Not familiar with the new Base Stations, all the older ones had modems. The base station with a modem IS the most convenient way to do this (esp. for dial-up) and provides the best firewall security for the whole network. However, if yours doesn't have a modem, it's still possible to establish internet sharing using one of your computers as the gateway to dial-out and share the connection.
BTW - if BB options are limited, have you considered satellite options (DirecPC, etc.)?
Mark

Email and big wifi problems.

Email and big wifi problems.
Why does it take 6 minutes to send a photo attachment when my iphone 4 will do it in 30 to 40 seconds ?
Why will my email account be recognised and log on only half the time?
Why does the wifi keep dropping out?
Why does the speed and signal vary when I'm sitting two feet away from by wifi router?
All settings in my phone have been reset twice as per advice from vodapone

Thanks very much, jjgraphics. I will grit my teeth and try India once more, as you suggest, and then get in touch with the moderators.
Karen.

Have Operating System 10.6.8, Mail Program 4.6. How can I prevent the next email in the que from automatically opening after I act on the previous email ? It creates big organizational problems for me. My computer changes this mode from self opening to m

Have Operating System 10.6.8, Mail Program 4.6.
How can I prevent the next email in the que from automatically opening after I act on the previous email ? It creates big organizational problems for me. My computer changes this mode from self opening to manually opening every few month with no ? action from me.
Help

Have Operating System 10.6.8, Mail Program 4.6.
How can I prevent the next email in the que from automatically opening after I act on the previous email ? It creates big organizational problems for me. My computer changes this mode from self opening to manually opening every few month with no ? action from me.
Help

IMac firewire problems - anyone just replace them?

hi. i know there have been a lot of problems and a lot of posts with the FireWire busses on the aluminum iMacs. I know no Apple solution has been released. But i'm wondering if anybody has had their FW busses on their iMac replaced with a bus using a different chipset than the Agrere(sp?) set. is this possible even? if this ridiculously complicated?

Since the Firewire is soldered onto the logicboard, you'd need an entirely different logicboard design. Unless Apple has used other chipsets, which is unknown, I don't think that's possible. It is more likely one of the issues outlined here needs to be addressed if you are having Firewire problems*:
http://www.macmaps.com/firewirebug2.html
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

Big Eudora problem, small Finder issue-- related?

I use Eudora for my email, and unfortunately my big Eudora problem is not getting solved in the Eudora message board; after half a day of Eudora quitting unexpectedly and then working fine but just for a few minutes if I restarted my computer, now when I launch Eudora, my Finder crashes-- everything disappears but the background image, and the computer is frozen.
The reason I'm posting here is that before it reached this stage, there were other weird things that didn't relate to Eudora: I would try to launch Flash, and Flash couldn't open a new blank file. I would try to launch something else, and an error message would say that some component in a Library wasn't found. All of these things are not happening anymore; as far as I know, only Eudora is misbehaving, but one odd feature remains: every finder window is showing, next to the search field in the upper right, a large question mark, and next to that there is a folder icon. If I click on the folder icon, I'm taken to one particular folder in my HD that has no significance to anything that I can tell. If I click on the question mark, I get "the item can not be found." (Hence the question mark, I guess). But what are those doing there in every finder window? Is there supposed to be a folder icon at the middle-top-right of every finder window? I don't remember one there.
I have done an archive-and-install of OS 10.4.6, but the finder window business is still the same.
The hardware test CD that came with my PowerBook says all hardware is okay. Disk Warrior finds no problems. Disk Permissions are okay in Disk Utility. I ran Clam Xav, and it found four copies of viruses: three (called Email.Ecard-6) in my In box and in two mailboxes with older In messages, and one (called Email.Phishing.Pay-8) in my Out box. I put all of these files in the trash and restarted my laptop, launched Eudora and the finder crashed. I reinstalled Eudora and the same thing happened, although I had put the infected boxes back in place before reinstalling Eudora.
I don't know where the problem is.
Any advice, please?
Paul

Ciao Von Stripes,
I've just found the solution:
Open - System Preferences, then open - Spotlight
There is a list of categories.
Find - Files on the list, then click, drag and drop to the position number 1 and "voilá"
I hope it works for you too...

Ipod update freeze, firewire problem, possible fix for many.

Hello all,
I've been having a problem with my ipod 3rd gen updating in much the same way as many in this forum have throughout a number of topic threads.
PROBLEM:
During song/playlist/content (not software update or restore) updating function one of two things would happen:
- update would freeze at some point of the transfer (5, 74, 687 songs in to the update) and I would have to force quite itunes and, not being able to dismount the ipod through recommended procedure, I would physically dismount the ipod and receive a scolding for improper dismounting of device.
- system would crash at some point of the transfer yielding the shaded screen and a prompt to restart the computer by depressing the front panel button for two seconds.
In each of the above cases, no matter how many songs that itunes thought it had transferred, I would only have about a dozen songs on the ipod itself, perhaps indicating a bottleneck on the G4 end of the transfer.
DEADENDS FOR ME THAT MAY STILL SOLVE PROBLEM FOR SOME:
- swaping out cables
- ipod software restore or restore to earlier version
SOLUTION:
After contacting Apple support, I was led to the opinion that the problem was with the firewire port itself. This was confirmed by attaching my ipod with my cable to a roomates G5 resulting in a faultless transfer of his song library. I was ready to go out and purchase a new firewire PCI card but decided to research firewire problems in the G4 folder of Discussions. This is where I found the fix to my problem (see links at bottom of document). It would seem that Mac ports, both firewire and USB, have a tendency to bog down after awhile and need to be reset. This can be a addressed by one of three possible solutions. The first and easiest was the solution that worked for me (for other solutions please follow links at bottom of page):
- powered down and disconnected all firewire and USB cables from the G4
- disconnected power cable from G4 (for laptops I would guess that the battery would need to be removed, not sure if that causes any other problems though, please research)and let sit for about 30 minutes.
- reconnected all cables and restarted computer. Ports should be reset at that point
- I took the added measure to restart my computer once with nothing attached to USB and firewire ports and then powering down with front panel button before connecting cables and proceding with final restart.
RESULT:
Faultless transfer of 37.6 gigs of content in less that 45 minutes.
LINKS:
http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?128@@.68bb1cb3
Dale Weisshaar, "Security Update killed my firewire ports" #1, 08:28pm Sep 27, 2005 CDT
Good Luck
GKE

This worked perfectly for me!!!
SOMEBODY PLEASE TAG THIS POST!!!
i have had the problem that everyone has posted about (i.e. - updated iTunes/iPod software and had the update/freeze problem, tried all solutions, to no avail, and was pretty much screwed.)
JUST DO EXACTLY WHAT HE SAYS TO DO (powermac g5, by the way):
1) power down the computer
2) unplug EVERYTHING (usb, firewire, power, monitor, etc.)
3) leave unplugged for 30 minutes
4) plug power back in
5) power up from main power button
6) wait for computer to start back up, then shut down from power button
7) plug everything back in and power up
8) restart once more for good measure
9) update your ipod
10) take a sigh of relief!
you are seriously a godsend...only one thing...I BOUGHT A NEW ONE ALREADY!!! i literally bought it the day that you posted this solution. After a month and a half of trying to fix this problem, i finally gave up and bought a 20GB iPod Photo with applecare...cost me about $380.
no matter, i think i'm gonna sell my "older" ipod to my mom or dad. they'll use it doing whatever they do. plus, that way, if there's any problem, i can fix it for them without feeling bad about screwing over some stranger.
thanks again, this solution worked perfectly.

Firewire problem since upgraded to 10.4.3

Hi there,
since I have upgraded my iMac G5 to 10.4.3, it is no longer recognising my external Lacie firewire drives. These work fine as I have tried them on a machine running 10.4.1, and they worked fine on the iMac G5 before I upgraded to 10.4.3
The iMac powers the devices but they do not mount or show up in disk utility or apple system profiler...
any ideas?

Robert,
Take a look at this thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=260074
Also, which update method did you use when you went to 10.4.3? Did you use Software Update or did you download the update from Apple's website? Some users have reported a resolution of Firewire problems by downloading and installing the 10.4.3 Combo Updater from Apple. You can do this even thought you are already at 10.4.3.
Regards,
Steve M.

Lacie Speakers and Mac Pro Firewire problem waking from sleep and loud feed

Lacie Speakers and Mac Pro Firewire problem waking from sleep and loud feedback. I had a powermac before this with the speakers and it worked fine. But the mac pro is having these issues. Is it the firewire port or the speakers or (and most likely) just a firmware glitch with mac pro? Anyone else see these issues?

http://web.mac.com/jerimydulay/Site/MyAlbums/Pages/Lacie_FirewireMIDI.html
Here is my audio settings. For some reason I wish I could remember what I did. It was actually the Apple Store tech in the Unversity Village in Seattle that gave me the idea and I swear I had to change the settings in MIDI setup. Now that Leopard is out it seems the MIDI stuff has been redone. I included screenshots of my MIDI setup as it is currently to see if you see something different on your computers. Let me know!

Hello, I have a big batterylife problem with my brand new iPod touch 4Gen 8GB white. Please help...

Hello, I have a big batterylife problem with my brand new iPod touch 4Gen 8GB white. Please help?

What battery life are you getting? Is it short when you are using the iPod? When it is sleeping?

Daisy chaining firewire problems

Hello. So i'm working on a project where the client has 15 4TB firewire drives filled with footage. I've been working with all of them daisy chained together. As you can probably guess, this is causing some issues. Some days I can come in and work for hours and have no crashes. some days, like today, it's hard to even get all 15 drives to mount without the firewire bus crashing and all of the drives unmounting. It's been getting shorter and shorter between crashing episdoes.
They have 7 Lacies, 6 WD's and 2 G-techs. I'm wondering if anyone knows a) if there's an optimal order to put these drives in based on manufacturer, b) if a firewire hub would be any help in this situation, c) any other solutions that wouldn't cost much that could help to make it run more smoothly.
This happens whether it's on a Mac Pro tower (latest Snow Leopard update) or on my MBP 17" (10.5.8)
Anybody done work with lots of drives daisy chained or know any other ways to work with this stuff? thank you...

ApptrGy wrote:
Same Problem. Just got the newest imac i7 from the previous years model, and now my FW 800 drives dont daisy chain, and kick each other off. Worked with the previous model no problem. Major pain not being able to have all the drives mount up together. Any solutions yet with this FW problem?
It's not the same problem and it's not a Firewire issue. You have too much data and too many signals for a single FW bus to handle which is why we recommend editing on the big Macs for anything beyond DV-size codecs. You cannot add an additional FW bus to the iMac.
bogiesan

Big Startup Problem

Okay, big problem here. It all started like 5 hours ago. I was attempting to install Tiger on an eMac without a DVD drive through my PowerBook and Target Disk Mode. It has worked 4 or 5 times before, so I know it should have worked. What happened is that the Tiger DVD would not boot on my PowerBook. So I just decided to give up and restarted, but the computer would not start up. So I shut it down and tried a safe boot, no luck. So then I just started it up and waited, and what happened is that after oh say, 5 minutes of the grey start up screen, the computer just shut off.
So I looked on the forums a bit and decided to try to use Disk Utility. No luck, it would just freeze on the grey screen and the pinwheel halted. So then I pulled out my handy DiskWarrior disk and put it in, tried starting up to a different problem. The Super Drive went NUTS. The disk sounded like it was about to shoot out of the drive into space, and the laser head sounded like it was moving back and forth so fast... Okay, I don't have anything for that. But I could feel the air shooting out of my SuperDrive. So I stopped trying that.
Then I tried Single User Mode and fsck. That rendered a "**Volume Check Error" I am not positive that is what it was, but close enough.
So Safe Boot, no. disk warrior, no. Disk Utility, no. Single User with fsck, no. Any other options? Oh, and I have also tried the standard PRAM and PMU. I have tried pretty much all I know of, tried all the utilities I have. I am stumped. I have multiple Macs and this is a new one to me.
The last question I have is, could it be the Hard Drive? I am going to go out tomorrow and buy myself a nice new clean External Drive and try to back everything up. I have important things backed up, like photos and such, but its been a few months. I was waiting for Leopard to set up Time Machine. Bad idea? I still have Apple Care, so really the important thing for me right now, is to make sure I can get all my data off and safe. Also, what does Apple do with dying drives? Do they shred them or anything? Because I don't want my data floating around Apple.
For now I guess I will just keep the computer off and go buy a drive. Any help would be really appreciated.

Are you able to boot from the system CD/DVD that was delivered with your PB ? On one of the media there is a hardware testing tool. If you are able to run it, then you may exclude things like a defective harddrive or logic board.
Should you not be able to start from the operating system DVD that shipped with your PB, I think then it's the time to call Apple Support - you are in luck still having AppleCare. So why not use it
The last question I have is, could it be the Hard Drive?
At least you should be able to boot from the CD/DVD drive, even in case of a defective HD.
I am going to go out tomorrow and buy myself a nice new clean External
Drive and try to back everything up.
Too late ... if you allow this sarcastic sidenote.
If you haven't bought an external drive yet, you may decide for a firewire one (you can boot from fw drives, but not from USB ones) as well as for a backup solution that "clones" the entire HD to the external one. By doing so, you simply can boot from the external HD in case of huge problems and are back in a working conditions after just minutes.
There are many free clone utilities available, SuperDuper, CCC and others. I use Intego's PersonalBackup X 4, but it is a commercial solution.
I have important things backed up, like photos and such, but its been a few
months. I was waiting for Leopard to set up Time Machine. Bad idea?
As far as I understood "Time Machine", this technique never can be a substitution for backing up data. What happens if your internal harddrive fails ? Not sure, if "Time Machine" is able to backup to external drives as well.
I still have Apple Care, so really the important thing for me right now, is to
make sure I can get all my data off and safe.
As others have reported, AppleCare does not recover data from broken HDs, but more likely erase the internal HD completely.
Also, what does Apple do with dying drives? Do they shred them or
anything? Because I don't want my data floating around Apple.
I hope they recycle the drive components instead of shredding them As mentioned, Apple likely destroys all data and install OS X in a clean way. But you may discuss this with Apple when you give them a call.

Firewire problem - (unable to list firewire device)

I plugged my newly purchased WD external harddisk into the iMac fw 400 port and nothing shows. I've tried to connect it with MBP and everything is working fine.
I checked the Console and it display the following message :
01/09/2009 3:53:40 PM SystemUIServer[1648] ICANotifications framework timed out waiting for a FireWire device with GUID '40718943393659308' to become ready!
01/09/2009 3:54:18 PM System Profiler[1750] SPFWR ERROR: FireWire bus may be unstable. Other FireWire devices may be present.
01/09/2009 4:24:56 PM SystemUIServer[74] ICANotifications framework timed out waiting for a FireWire device with GUID '40718943393659308' to become ready!
01/09/2009 4:31:22 PM SystemUIServer[74] ICANotifications framework timed out waiting for a FireWire device with GUID '40718943393659308' to become ready!
01/09/2009 4:36:30 PM SystemUIServer[74] ICANotifications framework timed out waiting for a FireWire device with GUID '40718943393659308' to become ready!
01/09/2009 4:38:26 PM System Profiler[109] SPFWR ERROR: FireWire bus may be unstable. Other FireWire devices may be present.
01/09/2009 4:48:03 PM SystemUIServer[74] ICANotifications framework timed out waiting for a FireWire device with GUID '40718943393659308' to become ready!
01/09/2009 4:49:12 PM SystemUIServer[74] ICANotifications framework timed out waiting for a FireWire device with GUID '40718943393659308' to become ready!
01/09/2009 4:57:04 PM SystemUIServer[74] ICANotifications framework timed out waiting for a FireWire device with GUID '40718943393659308' to become ready!
01/09/2009 4:57:37 PM System Profiler[110] SPFWR ERROR: FireWire bus may be unstable. Other FireWire devices may be present.
01/09/2009 5:13:23 PM SystemUIServer[74] ICANotifications framework timed out waiting for a FireWire device with GUID '40718943393659308' to become ready!
01/09/2009 5:18:14 PM System Profiler[110] SPFWR ERROR: FireWire bus may be unstable. Other FireWire devices may be present.
01/09/2009 5:27:44 PM SystemUIServer[74] ICANotifications framework timed out waiting for a FireWire device with GUID '40718943393659308' to become ready!
In the system profiler it said "unable to list firewire device"
I've tried the following method:
reset pram
unplug the power cord and wait for 30 mins and reboot
and they couldn't solve the problem.
Could anyone solve this?
Thanks

First thing to do is reset the FW chip set on the mother board. Unfortunately, when you power down the computer there is always a bit of power still applied to the motherboard to keep things alive and this usually includes the ports to do stuff like detect when a device wants to wake up the computer. The downside of this is when a bus/port chipset goes into a weird state, locks up, etc., simply power cycling (shutdown & restart) the computer won't work.
So first thing to try is resetting the chipset and to do this you have to power down the computer and completely unplug the computer from the wall power (unplug the power cord to your Mac). Also unplug everything from the Mac's ports (USB, FW, Ethernet, etc.) to make sure no parasitic power is still there to keep the chipset alive. Now let it sit for a minute (give those big power caps in there time to discharge). Now plug the power cord back in, plug in ONLY the keyboard and mouse, start up the Mac. Now plug in accessories/hard-drives and see if your FW ports and the drive work any better.
Best of luck!
Patrick
Reference articles:
What to do if your computer won't recognize a FireWire or USB device
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1317?viewlocale=en_US
USB and FireWire Quick Assist
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1151?viewlocale=en_US

Firewire problem (the old 'Warning: unable to list firewire devices')

Hello everyone,
I am having a very big problem with my 13" Macbook Pro since yesterday. I took it to work and hooked it to a RME Fireface 800 audio interface we have in there, and for some odd reason it didn't recognize the interface. After a few tries, it suddenly came alive. I did the recording session as usual, turned the notebook off and brought everything home. Today, I hooked it to my own RME Fireface 400, and one of the firewire ports on it wasn't working - I plugged on the other and started audio playback. After a few minutes, the audio stopped and the host connection problem led the Fireface has turned on. AFter this, I couldn't get the fireface to be recognize on its own - more on this later.
I went to system profiler and got a 'WARNING: Unable to list firewire devices' message. I already googled it and it seems I am not the only own having this problem. I already clean PRAM, SMC, ran disk utility to repair disk and disk permissions and nothing has worked. HOWEVER, one external HD (firewire) i have is working just fine on this same firewire interface. I also tried daisy chaining the Fireface to the Hard disk, the later being connected itself to the Macbook, and using this method the interface works. I also tried the interface on another computer and it works just fine - so the problem lies on my Macbook Pro.
Now, I went to the Console application to see if there was any error messages, and in fact there are plenty. I got a bunch of 'FireWire (OHCI) Lucent ID 5901 built-in: Bad selfIDs, issuing bus reset (retry 2)' and then 'Missing self ID for node 0!'. Also got some 'Firewire (OHCI) Lucent ID 5901 built-in: 4403 resets in last 3 minutes'. Also 'SPFWR ERROR: Firewire bus may be unstable. Other Firewire devices may be present.'. Right now, If i plug the interface and look for something on the console, I get nothing. I only get something when I look on the System Profiler.
So, obviously, there's a problem between my interface and the MBP. Anyone has ANY clue on what to do? BTW, the interface don't work when booting to bootcamp using W7 (it is also not recognized).But like I said, it works when daisy-chained to the hard disk or in another computer.
Thanks a lot,
Ivan

Does the RME device have its own AC power supply brick? If so I would suspect that it is failing and the system is pulling too much juice from the MBP. When you have a drive daisy-chained the interface is able to get the juice it needs from that drive and not from the Mac itself.
If it has no power supply brick you will have better luck with a powered hub.

Big Firewire Problem

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