Warning/Help i6000 1394 Firewire & USB2 External Hard Drive problems

HELP PLEASE!!!
System was fairly high end $2035 - $750 discount.
PROBLEMS:
External Firewire 1394 Hard drives are recognized but will NOT install properly.
Also, they lock up the Management Console (Device manager, Disk manager etc).
Event viewer message:
Hanging application mmc.exe, version 5.1.2600.2180, hang module hungapp, version 0.0.0.0, hang address 0x00000000.

USB2 External HDs are very intermittent. They will only install properly after their install fails & I uninstall them in device manager and rescan to reinstall several times.

USB2 1 GIG Flash (thumb) drives DO work WELL


TROUBLESHOOTING:
These External Hard Drives ALL work WELL in other systems including my older Dell desktops/laptops.

I installed a PCMCIA Firewire card on this computer and it has the same problem with external Firewire HDs.
This same PCMCIA card & external HDs work well in other laptops including several 4 year old Dell Latitude P3 CPU.

In other words:
The external HDs work well on all (many) other computers here but NOT on this Insp 6000.
The external firewire HD chipsets are Oxford 911 and later (The Best) and the USB2 external chipsets are varied several.

I did an XP repair install and no better.
Partitioned Hard drive and installed dual boot 2nd XP system and same problem.

Diagnostics F12 at boot (from the hidden partition) say there is no problem.

Is this a bad design?

Thanks for your help!

deheinx THANKS! for your effort and reply

I have several combinations of USB2/Firewire drives that I put together as well as integrated units that I purchased. I have some Bytecc enclosures that work USB2 and some that do not work well but different Bytecc models use different chipsets. I am aware that many other users have had problems with these and I really do not epect the USB2 units to be 100% working.
My main problem is Firewire connectivity. I maintain a lot of computers and use external Firewire drives for backup and installs. Both the integrated units and the ones I put together work on these many computers. I use units with Oxford chipsets since I believe those are considered the best.

You gave me something to think about since all the systems I maintain started as either original XP or XP SP1 that were all later updated to SP2. Maybe those work differently than an original clean SP2 install. I need to look at that.
I have since learned that changing jumpers from "master" to "cable select" allows some of the external firewire single drives to work although USB2 wanted "master" to work. I still can not get the dual hard drive Firewire externals to work.

I partitioned the i6000d hard driver and installed a "clean (no Dell stuff)" version of XP SP2 on the new partition (dual boot) and still have the same Firewire problem. I am going to try a third partition for XP SP1 to see what that does.

Again, thanks again for for your reply!
John

Thanks again deheinx!

I am lost in space.

I did an XP SP2 install from the Dell re-install CD that came with my i6000 to the following computers:
1) Dell Latitude Notebook with PCMCIA Firewire addon card
2) Dell Optiplex Desktop with PCI Firewire addon card (crummy Via Chipset)
Both detected and installed my external Firewire hard drives and they worked flawlessly.
I am about ready to give up and return the laptop.
John

(for the legal worriers - I have several new unused Dell COAs so my troubleshooting test installs were legal although of course no COAs were required)