Alright, you want technical integrity and professionalism...
1) I did in fact have problems with Windows 7 Ultimate. I can't give you the itty bitty details because I don't have the source code to examine.
2) Multimedia performance on Win7 is sub-par. There is a procedure call queue in the windows kernel. These are "delayed procedure calls" for code running in non-realtime priority. It takes time to process these procdures and that time affects performance. Multimedia is the most time critical function in home computers... It is handled in the DPC Queue. Thus the greater the "latency" on the DPC queue the more likely multimedia is to run into trouble with audio/video mistiming, buffer underruns etc... With me so far? Now Win7 also runs considerable background tasks some of which do produce spikes in that latency timing due to function calls not releasing processor time... which does affect multimedia performance. In Win7 DPC Latency is running an average of 200us where as on XP and 2000 it ran about 17 to 20us. Guess which OS is most likely to burble or drop frames...
Link Removed due to 404 Error 3) The recommendation to install an older version of NVidia's drivers came from NVidia itself. Lots of people were having video driver issues, NVidia even stepped up and admitted there were problems with it's drivers posting a short-lived notice on their website about it and suggested that people should try older versions if they had problems until they got it fixed. "Newer" absolutely does not translate to "Better" and quite often it can amount to the introduction of new bugs.
4) About capacitors... My friend, capacitors be they ceramic, electrolytic, mylar or air dielectric all do exactly the same thing... they store a small charge. The capacitor DOES NOT supply current or regulate voltages... it simply acquires and releases parts of it's charge in relation to the voltages applied. When used in shunt mode (as in a power supply) this effect can be used to smooth ripple out of a DC power source. But this is a millisecond to millisecond effect which has little or no actual impact on voltage regulation... That is the job of voltage regulators, made up of active components that monitor the supply voltage and adjust themselves accordingly. I guarantee that if you stick a voltmeter probe on a motherboard and you get erratic voltage readings it's going to be a bad voltage regulator... not a bad capacitor. However; it is indeed possible that a bad voltage regulator could damage the capacitors on a motherboard. Replacing the capacitors without fixing the regulator is as dull minded as replacing a fuse without fixing the short.
Electric fields and capacitance : CAPACITORS My friend, I'm 59 years old. Judging from your account image (if that's really you) I'd put you in your late 20s... This means I was probably designing and repairing electronic devices 10 years before you were born. I started in electronics as a hobby in my teens, turned it into a career in my mid-20s and have worked in one aspect or another of the industry ever since. My "bragging rights" range from pro-audio to industrial control to robotics to computers and beyond. I've designed hundreds of working electronics systems over the years. I've also trained dozens of technicians, taking in apprentices whenever my career would permit. My last gig was as the national service manager for a major electronics firm...
Now I will give you very high marks. You know a lot of stuff and you're certainly very good at helping people with most problems.
However, at some point every good technician (or engineer) is humbled by the discovery of just how much they don't know. Usually resulting in the realization that what they don't know is more important than what they do... When that moment comes generally the first thing to be understood is that cut and dry answers centering around shallow beliefs such as "Newer is Better" or "This happened last time so it must be the case this time" just don't carry the day. We all learn a new mode of thinking based upon investigation, not platitudes.
I employed a guy once, most productive repair tech I've ever seen... Dude couldn't even solve Ohm's law. But he knew that and governed himself accordingly. When he got stuck he was unafraid of taking advice or asking for help... A lesson most of today's "techie" types never learn.
Sooooo... since this appears to be a point of friction with us. I will bit you adeiu. I came here intitially hoping for a solution to a problem I've yet to solve (you, know, the part about being unafraid to ask for help) and stuck around to repay everyone's kindness by providing answers to some of the stuff I do know... Alas, my welcome seems worn, so we can just leave it at that.