Hello Baz - welcome to the Sony Forums

This question appeared earlier this year in April here .....

https://www.sony.co.uk/discussions/message/652862

..... and unfortunately this camcorder will not link to a Windows 7 PC using a USB connection. However, like Blencogo suggests, if you have the latest version of Windows Live Movie Maker and are able to use firewire / iLink instead of USB, you should be able to transfer video without the need for additional drivers.

The latest version of the free software is available from here:

http://explore.live.com/windows-live-movie-maker

If your PC doesn't have a firewire port then, depending upon whether you have a PC or Laptop, there are various options to get your PC equipped with these. For a desktop PC, if you are comfortable with adding internal PCI cards into your computer than you could purchase something like this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ex-Pro-including-connection-Camcorders-Panasonic/dp/B000WH2NRO/ref=sr_1_3?ie...

The benefit of something like this is that you get a firewire cable included as well which will fit your camcorder. If you have a laptop PC then, once you have checked to see which expansion port has been included with your laptop, you can choose one of these:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=laptop+firewi...

In either case, I would advise shopping around online as quite often these internal components are reduced to clear by various retailers - I have just used Amazon links as an example

There is also the option of installing XP onto your computer as well as a second operating system which you can load up purely for this kind of task. Any raw video data can be saved to a specific hard drive location which you will then be able to find in Windows 7 when you reboot.

I hope this helps,

Simon