Topic: FF800 no longer linking?

Windows 7 64 bit with ff800, working flawlessly for about a year.  Unit itself is about 4 years old.  A week or so ago I hit play on itunes and the program froze.  Restarted, opened reaper, no audio.  Sync lights are good on the ff but no sound.  Powered down the pc and reset the cable going to ff (on the ff unit, not the pc) and viola no problems for a few days.  This happened a few times and now I'm not getting anything.  The cable seems loose on the unit as it has for some time (I never unplug this thing or put tension on the cable).  I'm confused because I would imagine the red not synced light would come on if the cable was loose.  Is there possibly another issue going on?
thanks