Vista will not run my external HDDs

I recently bought a new computer with Vista Home Premium 64 bit with SP1. The computer is an HP Pavilion a6700f with AMD Phenom X4 processor, 4 GB of ram, has integated 1394 Firewire ports and an added 1394 PCI card.

From the start, I have had continuing problems with my Western Digital EIDE HDDs and an HP dvd1040i LightScribe drive mounted in an external case Oxford 911 bridgeboards to convert IDE to Firewire. This setup worked perfectly for almost four years in the old system running Win XP Pro with SP2.

ZRight now the HDDs show up in Device Manage3r but will not start. A liitle troublshooting gets me to an error message that the driver software is successfully loaded but encounters a problem when trying to start. The dvd drive is running perfectly.

I have extensively and exhaustively verified that all the hardware is functioning correctly, all the cables are good, all connections are tight, all drivers are up to date and all connections are made correctly. I have contacted all manufacturers for techncial support but so far the drives still won't start.

Is this just poor Firewire performance on Vista's part or is there something else that's causing all this? According to Microsoft and Western Digital, some drive combinations under Firewire don't work reliably all the time. But WQDC will not support my IDE drives mounted in an external case (they say it's not recommended even though they sell Firewire-connected external drives).

Is the Oxford 911 firmware compatible with Vista 64 bit? I have not been able to get a firmware updater program to recognize my bridgeboards, so I can't force flash an update.