Well a firewire port burning out has nothing to do with a manufacture. It has to do with repeatedly connecting a device to it, which causes repeated jolts of electricity being sent to the port. Whether you use a PC or Mac, it’s possible it can happen. And what do you mean by:
“the computers a pretty new (recently upgraded)”
Are you saying that because you recently upgraded, it qualifies as “pretty new?” That’s not really the case unless you got a new firewire port installed…
Trashing preferences basically resets FCP. Sometimes when FCP is acting funny and you don’t know what to do, trashing the preferences usually solves the problem.
