Q6600

4GB DDR2 667

2 WD 750GB in Raid 1

RAdeon HD4850X2 2GB

And yes Norton has returned to competitive rates of system performance.

Ok so I think I may know what the cause might be.... but I'm not sure... If I check the Resource Monitor 1.29GB shows grayed out as Hardware reserved. If I go to Computer -> Properties then it reports 4.00 GB (only 2.75GB usable). I have no idea why or how to free that memory up but I see other threads of people having this issue. Hopefully I find more forums on this topic.

I checked each RAM chip and it is fine. I checked each DIMM slot and it is fine. I ran a intensive RAM test that took over 6 hours last night and no errors reported.

Windows 7 is slower than Vista (both x64) for me too!!

I have the thorn in my side of a Dell XPS from 2007 (school discount). They sold me BTX after Intel had canceled it. Anyway I have SATA 1.5. I have PCI-E 1.0. I have DDR2 667 MHZ. So my 70 lbs aluminum case with 1000 watt power supply is actaully a prison.

Anyway... to get to the point, and avoid the bitterness of Dell's greed and subservience to Intel, I boot much slower in Win 7. My brother is using an SSD with the JMicron controller and SATA 3Gb/s on a weaker system and boots Win 7 like a dream.

My paging file is 4GB. To me it feels like Windows never grabs and makes full use of my CPU.

A few things of note:
I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate x64
I'm using Norton Internet Security 2010.
I have already stripped the startup on MsConfig.
When my system is crunching and I'm multi-tasking my CPU usage never, ever gets to even half way on the 4 cores. Vista had no problem there.