PRE 8, no more crashes

Question

I thought I would just share some positive news regarding PRE 8. I finally completed a 10 minute 720p HD video for upload to the web (input files from 2 cameras totalling approximately 4 hours of footage) where everything went smoothly... no hangs, no crashes.
The editing was done on a new PC that I just assembled which was optimized for video editing. I took all the lessons I learned from perusing this forum as well as from other sites when I built the new PC. Here is what worked for me:
1. O/S: Windows 7 Ultimate.
2. Video Editing Software: PRE 8 plus Quicktime install.
3. Hardware: Intel i7 860 CPU, 8 GB DDR3 1333 RAM, 3 x Western Digital Black HDD (1 for O/S and Apps, 1 for Project Files, 1 for Scratch files and O/S pagefile), Sapphire Radeon 5850 video card (using the latest WHQL drivers on ATI/AMD website).
4. Disabled Auto-analyzer and Organizer.
5. Disabled background rendering.
Since Windows 7 has all the CODECs needed to playback video, there is no need to install any CODEC/CODEC pack downloaded from the web. Also installing Quicktime appear to have solved the problem I had before where I need to transcode the video from my camera first to be able to load it to PRE8.
There are still some quirks such as the project intermittently "losing pointers" to previously rendered files when the project is re-opened but there are no more crashes and hang ups (knock on wood).
In summary and looking back, I believemost of the issues I encounter were the result 1 or all of the following:
1. Buggy drivers from Nvidia (I was using a GTX 260 video card in my older machine).
2. CODEC packs installed interfering with PRE8. These CODEC packs were installed years ago in order to be able to playback video on the PC.
3. Not installing Quicktime.
4. Buggy Auto-analyzer/Organizer. Turning this feature off appeared to speed up PRE8.
Hopefully this will help others who are still having issues with PRE8.
One final thing about my setup, it appears PRE8 is not using the GPU to assist the CPU even if I have that option checked under preferrences when rendering videos... the reason I say this is because the GPU temps does not appear to increase when I render videos for smooth previewing. Not a big deal so long as everything is stable.

Answer 1

The background rendering seemed to be the cause of my crashes, too, so I disabled that....it made no difference to the functionality of an obviously flawed program.  I have wasted too much time trying to figure out PE8's problems and get it operating with Windows 7.  This is the first time since starting back with PE1 that I've had any issues with PE or any of its upgrades (I've worked with 5 upgrades now).  I'm now shopping for a better, more stable program that can actually function with Windows 7.  This is really disappointing since I just spent $99 on the PE8 upgrade, but have been unable to produce anything with it (I had no choice but to upgrade since PE7 does not function with Windows 7....ha! neither does PE8).  Yes, this is just me venting and not contributing anything to this forum, but maybe someone from Adobe will catch on.
By the way, my system consists of the following:
          Windows 7 64 bit
          Intel Core i5 processor
          1tb internal HD, several external HDs
          8gb RAM
          NVidia GT230 with 196.21 driver update