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The BSOD Doctor
Static can often be an issue when you're messing about inside a PC, some people seem to carry more of a static charge than others. Ideally you should get a wrist strap that keeps you earthed (most good computer shops have them). Alternatively you can leave the power cord plugged into the wall socket but switched off. This keeps the earth connection to the PC, by regularly touching the metal area of the power supply or case you will be earthing yourself and dissipating potentially dangerous static charges.
Opening the case is usually quite easy, if you tell us what case you have then those with the same case can tell you exactly how to open it. Inside you'll find the large motherboard, screwed down into the case, with a number of cards plugged into it. By tracing the wires back from the FireWire ports on the case you should be able to identify the FireWire card. It probably won't be very big and may be tucked away. Just see whether it is seated fully home, push it gently to see. To be completely sure you can pull it out and then push it back firmly (but gently). Also check that all cables and connectors are properly seated. It's not unusual to see connectors that are not plugged in anywhere, if you're not sure whether a connector should be plugged in and where it should go take some photos of the inside of your PC and post them on here.
Sometimes stuff does move in transit and it's not impossible that the FireWire card has become unseated (or one of the plugs has).
Drivers are items of specialised software that form the interface between the intricacies of the particular bit of hardware (like your FireWire port) and the standard interfaces of Windows. For most hardware a driver is required to be installed in order for the hardware to work properly (or at all). Drivers are written by the hardware vendors, all the appropriate drivers for your build will be on a CD that was supplied to you with the PC. I'm assuming that Windows was pre-installed? It's possible that PCS simply didn't install the FireWire driver, so you need to insert the driver CD disk you have (and you may have more than one) often they will auto-start and you'll see some sort of driver install program, you need to look for an option to install IEEE 1394 (or FireWire) drivers.
If you can't make head nor tail of your driver disks then call PCS, they will be able to talk you through exactly how to run whatever driver disks they sent you.
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