PE7 crashes with 'effects' & 'transitions'??

Question

Hi All,
New user of PE7 and of this forum.
I installed PE7 this weekend and have been using it for about 5hrs in total. I'm a novice video editor and have chosen PE7 to get me started with editing my raw AVCHD files from my Canon HG10.
My problem is that in the 'Edit' tab, I cannot use either the 'effects' or 'transitions' or my computer crashes. By crashes, specifically I get the following message:
A white window appears in the center of the screen entitled "Microsoft Windows". The error message states "Adobe Premiere Elements.exe has stopped working. Windows is checking for a solution to the problem." And after 20 seconds of thinking the error message goes on to say "A problem casued the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available.
All other aspects of PE7 work fine. I have imported over 50 raw AVCHD files, mucked about with them, split them, added music files, added titles etc and then rendered to my hard drive and also rendered and uploaded directly to Youtube. All of this works perfectly. Just not the 'effects' or 'transitions' which is very frustrating.
Regarding my computer/system:
Pentium i7 920 Quad Core
12 GB DD3 RAM 1600
Windows Vista Home Premium SP2 64 bit (the operating system is installed on a seperate solid state drive SSD).
The storage is 2 x 1.5TB Seagate 7200rpm HDD's
I made sure that both the operating system and Quicktime are both running the most up to date version with all updates.
I would appreciate any feedback/advice on my problem as I would love to be able to use the whole PE7 package.
many thanks for your assistance.

Answer 1

Thankyou all for all of your responses and advice. I will read all of the additional threads and links that you have pointed out if I haven't already.
To answer some of your questions.
How far do you get when the error message first appears? Do you hit just the "Effects Tab" or "Transition Tab" in Edit Mode, and the error message pops up? Or, do you get as far as selecting a specific transition or a specific effect before the error message pops up? If the latter, which transitions, which effects?
It is immediate. As soon as I click on the "Effects" or "Transition" button in the edit tab the error message pops up. Interestingly though last night I managed to open the "Effects" and apply probably about 3 effects as a test before it crashed out on the 4th trial of an effect. However, the "Transitions" button crashes out immediately when pressed.
Interestingly as well I am able to fade in/out of audio and video by clicking the right mouse button and chosing fade in/out. Not sure if this is part of the transitions part though or a seperate function.
You say that everything else works fine. Could you clarify one point? What happens if you have a Timeline consisting of only photos? Can you apply transitions and effects to them without this issue described for AVCHD on the Timeline?
Hmm...not sure. I have only played with AVCHD video files so far, no stills. Will try it tonight and report back.
Further, if you cut your Timeline content in half, can you then apply transitions and effects to the remaining Timeline? And, it looks like you probably create the Titles toward the end of a project. What happens if you open a new project, create your titles and then bring in your AVCHD to the Timeline? Any more crashes?
Yes I create the titles towards the end of the project. No cannot apply transitions to any part of the timeline. Effects did work briefly as noted above. I will try your suggestion about creating titles before bringing AVCHD files onto the timeline.
So how much available RAM do you actually have when you are running Premiere Elements in the computers' 64 bit system?
Good question. I will check tonight.
thanks again everyone. I test all of the suggestions and do the follow up reading. In the interim please feel free to provide any additional suggestions.