Scary, M-Audio Firewire Solo stopped working for a short while

Here's how the crazy thing happened:

I have Mac OSX Intel 10.4.6 installed on my desktop. And then I have the Firewire Solo for Mac driver installed. During the process it said something like Firmware upgrade. I let it go and the installation was completed. I can play mp3 on the Mac side.

Then I switched back to Windows XP, and to my surprise the FireWire was stopped working!!! And no matter how many times I unplugged and plug again it still failed. I was very fustrated. Finally I have the Firewire connected when rebooting the machine to the Mac side. On the Mac side, I was told that the firmware update was once again going on. And then the Mac side worked. Without disconnecting anything, I switched back to the PC side, and finally the Windows side recognized the Firewire Solo, and installed the corresponding driver.

Strange enough, at the last step even the PC side says something like "the firmware is now being updated".

So does it mean that the firmwire will be updated everytime I switch from Mac to Windows, or from Windows to Mac?

That doesn't make sense, and surely make my switching life much more complicate :- < .

Let me reboot once and see how goes ...