No "IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers" node in device manager

Question

I have a new computer running Windows 7. It is functioning well, apart from the firewire card not being recognized. I can see that the BIOS does see the firewire card. Pages on the web offering advice on this kind of problems start their solutions with going
to the device manager and expanding the "IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers" node in the device tree. Only I don't have such a node. How can I get the "IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers" node to appear in the device manager?
Windows update reports that Windows is up to date.

Answer 1

This is one of many threads I came across googling roughly 'IEEE 1394 device not showing up in device manager'. After a lot of reading I never found a real solution - until I started piecing some things together. This is what I did and it works, seems very
simple, logical. Thought I should share it, hopefully save someone else the agony of searching and reading for hours.
Basically, what I think is or can be happening -- and I'm no expert at all -- is that there's miscommunication between the OS, the bus, and the device. The OS doesn't install the service for the bus unless the device is plugged in at startup (the external
hard drive, camera, or whatever), and sometimes it doesn't install the service even if the device is plugged in. Perhaps the device is supposed to send a message that starts the service - who knows. Maybe on older devices the driver isn't doing what it's supposed
to do, and perhaps you have no updated driver and can't get one.
In any event, I edited an entry in the registry that tells the 1394 bus host controller to start at OS startup instead of 'on demand'. After a restart, the bus host will load at startup, and when you plug your firewire device in, the bus host will detect
it and run normally... At least it works for me. Here's the instructions:
Go to search, regedit.exe, run program. This opens the registry.
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurentControlSet\Services and find the folder that corresponds to the 1394 bus host you normally use or see in device manager. On my computer it's 1394ohci. You might have to do a little digging here to make sure you've got
the right service. There's actually 2 folders/entries in my registry that look similar. I used this one and it's working for me.
When I click on the 1394ohci folder it brings up a list of settings. For "Start," "REG_DWORD," the 'Data' value is probably going to be 0x00000003. That means 'start on demand'. I changed this to 2, which means 'start at startup'. To
modify value, right click on start, select modify, and type in 2. Here's a link to descriptions of this stuff:  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722564.aspx
That's it. Close the editor, restart, and the IEEE 1394 Bust Host controller\1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller should show up in device manager. And when you plug-in your device, it should be detected. Depending on what driver you're using for the bus
host controller, you might see an extra entry popup in device manager (if you're using the 'legacy' driver). Otherwise nothing else pops up when you plug in your device. I guess it might depend on the device though. That's the way it is for me with an older
Acom external hard drive...
Hope this helps...