Ok, I had my new video card in this evening, and Vista first found new hardware and then said it failed to install. I restarted, and after finally getting to the desktop, I tried to see if I could load drivers from the CD that came with the video card. Windows Explorer stopped responding, and soft locked to the point that task manager wouldn't open, and I had to reset the system. Then I checked Device Manager, and the video card was properly recognized. I set the desktop resolution, but Aero Glass was not enabled. As far as I could find online (very breif search), it should have enabled itself if the video card was good enough. I found nVidia had a beta driver, but the 7800GT was not listed as a supported adapter. The 7800GTX was. Odd.
So I went ahead and formatted the partition Vista was on and reinstalled. Seems to have come up fine, found the video adapter and Aero Glass is running. Had a little trouble finding my ethernet controller. I did like I did last time, used my USB ethernet adapter to get online. Then Windows Update found a driver. The AC'97 driver didn't load automatically. The install from the motherboard driver CD got that working.
In the previous load, and in this load, the system seems to 'stutter' about every second. You can hear it when a sound plays, and can see it by moving the mouse around the screen.
The device manager is clean except for one unknown device. 'NVCinema BDA Driver'
Any ideas on the stutter?