The information in this post will hopefully be of aid to some of you.
I recently (8 months ago) purchased a laptop (HP DV7 2170 us) to have a portable means of computing and possible recording audio
through my fireface 800.
After blue-screening W7 many times and not being able to get any level of functionality out of my FF800 which works very well on my main pc
I decided to try just plugging in a external firewire HD to see if that would work.
Bluescreen....
My next step was research..
Essentially ...J-Micron bad.....TI good
So with this information in hand I purchased a Star tech EC13942 and to my great satisfaction
everything works as it should.

This is where I decide to have some fun.
I email HP support to open a service ticket to see how they would deal with the original chipset not working properly.(I removed the Star tech external cardbus adapter)
I send in all relevant info such as my firewire devices and the behavior of the laptop when I plug in the FF800.
The steps I was told to do were:
1--------Update the bios----------- this did not work (surprise)
2 -------plug in the device after the boot process is over (still bluescreening as before)
3--------boot into the bios by pressing f10 and run a hard drive self test and a memory test (both tests PASS)
4-------- THIS IS WHAT HP CURRENT RESPONSE WAS ''it is visibly found a case of complete hardware failure/malfunction''
and they say they will accept the laptop in for repair under recommended technicians? supervision.

I do not think so.

So under the strong assumption that the J-Micron firewire chipset is at fault I reply to hp that I would
like to know what FW chipset is in my DV7 (I already know the answer but they don't)
Here is the reply ''Thank you for contacting HP Total Care.
I appreciate your prompt response and I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this matter might have caused.

In response to your recent query, I would like to inform you that we do not have the expertise to provide you the information regarding the firewire Chipset in your notebook. In order to assist you further, I would request you to provide us some additional information so that I can go ahead and escalate the case to our higher up technical support team for a research. As soon as we gather the information, we will email you the details. ''
This is where I leave things for now.
I will update for those who are interested.
Thanks for reading

Update:
My case has been escalated to a higher level. I will get a answer regarding what firewire chipset is used in my laptop in the next 24 to 48 hours.