Found this thread in Google. Just registered...
I had the same problem as Jethoma. Bought a 3 port firewire/5 port USB card (Ali M5271) from Ebay. Installed it in the slot, started Windows XP (SP-1) and card was recognized and drivers installed. But when I checked in the device manager, nothing was working. Insterted the driver CD that came with the card and halfway through the driver installation, they system crashed and rebooted. Tried it again with the same outcome.
My solution, based on comments above was to remove the card in the device manager (remove every USB/1394 device that isn't working). Then run the Integrated207.exe driver (I got mine directly from
www.ali.com.tw). Then reboot. New drivers installed automatically, and everything appears to work.