Premier Elements 4 very slow and frequently crash

Question

Dear Adobe support staff,
I've purchased Adobe Premier Elements 4 several yeard ago for an urgnet job I made.
I didn't use it much because it crashes all the time, and it is very very slow and frustrating. So I've used other software instead.
Needless to say that I was very dissappointed.
Now, I want to give it a second chance. but it stiil keep crashing and still very very slow.
My questions:
1.  Why does it  crash all the time?  is there is a fix for the problem?
2.  What kind of  Graphics Card or Video Editing Card do you recommend for my system to work relatively normal ?
3.  How much will it  cost me to upgrade to version 11 ?
My system SPEC:
OS:  Microsoft Windows 7 ultimate  with SP1 (32bit) .
CPU:  INTEL Core2 QUAD cpu Q9550 , 2.83 GHZ with a 4 GB of RAM.
Graphics card:  NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT.
Motherboard:   MICRO STAR INTERNATIONAL , MODEL MS-7353  3.0,  CHIPSET INTEL X48,
RAM:  4 GB Dual Channel DDR2, 400 MHZ ,  512 MB memory.
Please  advice.
Sincerely yours,
Shimon Tourgeman.

Answer 1

For the crashing, this FAQ Entry might be useful. It starts with a general PrE checklist, then goes into computer and OS tuneup, and ends with many links on troubleshooting and finding causes: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/792580?tstart=0
As for the GPU, any current video card, with at least 1GB of VRAM, will work well. PrE does not place much of a load on the GPU, but it DOES rely very, very heavily on the video driver. Both nVidia and AMD/ATI issue constant driver updates, with nVidia leading the way at this moment.
Also, while talking about drivers, some users have experienced issues with Win8 drivers. I would wait until SP1 has been released for Win8, before changing to it from Win7. For this reason, I just ordered a new laptop, and specified Win7. As the company, ADK, only builds custom and semi-custom video editing machines, they commented that they will ONLY install Win7 at this time, and have been testing Win8, since the first beta. They do not think that it is yet ready for "prime time."
Good luck,
Hunt
PS - I still use PrE 4.0, but on XP-Pro SP3, and have only crashed it 2-3 times over the years. At least 2 times, it was due to OE on my part. However, my computer is tuned and built for video editing.