If your still reluctant to do a system recovery (not system restore), than try defragmenting your hard drive. If your drive is seriously fragmented than this may cause a problem. The next thing to do is to start buying upgrades, but this really isn’t necessary because we know your computer can do it without the upgrades. I can’t really think of anything else other than what we already talked about. I really believe a system recovery will solve this problem even though it’s only been several months since it last worked. If not, than there may be something wrong with the firewire ports on the camera, computer or the firewire cable itself.
Try downloading free trial software to see if the problem isn’t moviemaker. I would suggest adobe premiere elements. When loaded, just go to File>capture
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=premiere%5Felements&loc=en%5Fus
