Camera not being recognized

Ok, so I have a sony HCR-96 digital camera. I've been using it for a while, using a firewire (6-4) to transfer my footage on my desktop PC. I recently got a laptop, and wanted to do some of my editing on there, but I discovered that the laptop firewire is a 4 pin. So I went out, bought a all in 1 Firewire cable (It's a 6-6, but has 2 4's that fit over the 6's making it a 4 pin) and tried that. It didn't work.

So I tried the same wire on my desktop pc, seeing if it was the laptops fault. It didn't read it either. So I used my original firewire cable just to make sure it wasn't the cable I just bought, but for some reason now my desktop PC isn't even recognizing my camera.

This worries me, because I'm thinking something is either wrong with my docking station now, or my camera. Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this? Next week I am going on vacation with my family and every year we make a short film. My camera and laptop are needed for this obviously lol, but that won't happen if it's not working. Also, there's a film contest for a short commercial coming up that I was going to enter in but that's out the window too if I can't figure this out.

So any help would be much appreciated, thanks guys!