HD Video Editing NIGHTMARE

What a NIGHTMARE this has been. I got an HD video camera a couple weeks ago. I opened the box, shot my sons football game, and edited it down. That seemed to work fine. However, I was disappointed with the quality so I did some digging and realized I didn't record it in HD.

The next game recorded in HD. When I began to edit the film (Data?) my system kept crashing BSOD or an error that said "Powerdirector 8 has stopped working." After struggling through that by saving every couple min and rebooting I then could not "Produce" (a Cyberlink powerdirector term) my HD video. The CPU was working at 100% and it eventually stopped working. with the same errors.

My current PC Specs are:
Intel DG965wh Motherboard
Core 2 Duo E6600
6G of ram
Nvidia Quado 570 GPU

I have the Quadro because I use solidworks for work.

I went to Frys they told me to switch video cards to a GTX 260 that was a little better for the video, but it sucked for solidworks. So I took it back and talked to the manager of the department. He said maybe I should upgrade my CPU. He gave me to one of his crony's to help me and I was told a 755 chip is a 755 chip. So I bought a core 2 quad, but when I installed that, it did not work. The machine would turn on fans would run and then just stop. There was absolutely no boot process ran that were visible.

      UGH!!!!!

I don't know what to do. I need my PC for Solidworks, but I also want to do video editing.

Any thoughts? Should I remove my MB and CPU and upgrade to the new i7 platform? I don't want to spend the bucks in this wonderful economy, but whatever