Dropped Frames while capturing video

[Robstro]

I am trying to capture video from my Panasonic NV-DS30b via my Firewire card and using Premiere. I can manage to capture the footage and control the camera from within Premiere, so there is no problem there.
The problem is I am getting "Dropped Frames" at least once a second and this makes the final videos very choppy.
I am wondering what could be causing this.
My system specs are:

Windows ME
Pentium 4 1.3Ghz
256mb RAM
20Gb Hard Drive (I don't know whether it is 5400rpm or 7200rpm. My guess would be 5400)
Geforce 2 MX Graphics Card

I have used Ctrl-Alt-Del to end all programs running in the background and so they are not causing the problems.

Can anyone help?

Thanks a lot

Robbie

[MarkE19]

You will be surprised at what is running in the background on a PC. I use a utility called EndItAll to make sure I have a clean PC for editing. Do a search for this free download.
Defrag your hard disk. This can make the PC work harder than it really needs to if bad fragmented. Also make sure you have plenty of free space on the drive. DV footage takes 1Gb of space for 4 minutes of captured footage, plus space for editing
A second disk is also a good option for capturing the footage. If the drive is accessing programmes while copying the footage then it can drop frames as it is working too hard.

Mark.

[Robstro]

OK thanks for the tips. I think I will get a new hard drive. I have managed to stop the frames dropping by enabling "DMA", but I do not have much space.

Thanks again
Robbie