Well I recently made the decision to move over to windows 7. My last PC build I was smart enough to buy components compatible with a 64 bit platform (believe me this was a shock to me as well haha).   I upgraded with a dual boot setup. Keeping windows XP around long enough to help me with the switch over.  Keeping Xp really was because of the VPC's I have running SharePoint that I had not done the proper research for pulling them over to a 64 bit platform.

Long story short, the setup and install was seamless, I mean totally easy.  I didn't notice anything negative, it found most if not all of the drivers I needed to have stuff up and working upon first boot up. There were some drivers and install packages I had to go back later and install to get the richer user experience going.

I then realized I had two sticks of one gig ram just waiting around to be installed when I put up an OS that could handle more than 4 gigs. So I went digging in the Tupperware storage bin that sits in my closet and holds all the PC components the world could ever need. Seriously I could build an additional two PC's merely out of parts in this thing.  So I throw the ram in and boot up. Initially I noticed no ill effect, everything was running smooth and it recognized the additional two gigs for a total of 6.  Then something strange happened.  The "AERO" taskbar failed because "there is not enough memory to run". I found that odd considering it was running perfect with 4 gigs and the fact that I added two more should have no issue.

I figured it might have something to do with the timing or mhz the ram was running at and the fact that it was a different brand.  So I bit the bullet and jumped on newegg and purchased 4 more gigs of the exact same ram that was in the computer initially.  I assumed surely this would fix any issue I had and I would be cruising along with 8 gigs of ram.  I wasn't so lucky.

First thing I found odd is that the exact same ram, some speed, capacity and manufacturer came in like a mini size. I popped in the ram, and initially the computer would not boot up with the new ram.  This is a common issue with PC's and meant I probably didn't install the chip fully. Quickly corrected I booted back up everything was right in the world. Until that is, the world came to a grinding hault.

Everything froze up, it was a flash back to my Windows ME days. This is the first time I've had a PC lock up in years.  Ok so I'm fibbing a little, it wasn't everything locked up. I still had mouse and keyboard control but anything on the screen was totally frozen.

After doing some research I found that most of the hardware vendors don’t have solid Win 7 drivers out yet (to be expected). But a lot of the Vista drivers and even some of the XP drivers work just as well. I also noticed since it seemed to be related to my video I would focus on the video drivers as well.

System specs:

2.4 ghz QUAD core

Asus P5B motherboard

3 terrabyte of combined storage

8 gigs of ram  Kingston 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Dual Channel

Nvidia 8600gt

Nvidia 6200

2 light-on DVD-r's (16x)

Thermaltake 500 w PSU

Koolance Exos water cool system:

CPU Block, GPU Block, Northbridge Block, 1 Hard Drive Block

So here's what I did:

The first thing I did was strip out the drivers windows 7 installed for my video cards. I caught a few lines from a forum post that mentioned support for multiple video cards running multiple monitors was sketchy in the RC release of win 7.

Next I restarted, and booted into the BIOS. I manually changed my Ram speed from auto to 5300 MHZ.

Back into windows, I went back through and using the install CD's for my video cards I manually installed the drivers in the device manager, because none of the CD's would auto run.

I restarted once more and once back into windows I was good for a solid hour then I had a brief lock up when opening a few programs all at once.

Lastly, I turned off the auto rotation of background images on my desktops.

I think a combination of all these things especially the last one did the trick (knock on wood). I haven't had a lock up at all. I'll keep this post updated if anything changes. Good luck with your upgrades, ahh the joys of early adoption.

UPDATE:

Had a few more lock ups so I did some research and found that, its certainly due to my dual video cards. One is PCI and one is PCI-E. I pulled out the PCI one (nvidia 6200) and I haven't had a single lock up. This is got to due to the lack of drivers out right now in an infant product. Hopefully I'll find a fix soon.

Update 2: Well I figured out the problem and well, it’s not the best of fixes but it worked for me.  In the end either my main video card was going bad and putting too much load on the 6200gt Nvidia card. OR it was the fact that my 6200 was old school PCI based (not PCI-e) so a combination of the PCI secondary and the going bad primary PCI-E card I think was the culprit.

Solution: I bought a new mother board (Asus P5N-D) that had two PCI-E slots for Dual SLI compatible video cards. I bought two of the exact same video cards (Nvidia 9500 GT). Loaded up a fresh OS install of windows 7 and she’s running great. And it only took 200 bucks in parts [/sarcasm].  Oh well as much as we do on our computers it’s a good investment.