There is an issue specific to Windows 7 that will cause emacs open new frames even if you have the server running. I believe for me there are actually two issues:
The emacs server file cannot be stored anywhere except within %appdata% so if you run your home from Dropbox or somesuch thing you will have to add this to force the server file back to the appdata directory:
(if (string= system-name "MATH-PC") (setq server-auth-dir (concat (getenv "APPDATA") "/.emacs.d/server")))
The server directory had to be owned by the same user as is running emacs. Typically you will run emacs from a normal user and the directory will below to Administrator. To fix this you need to browse to “%appdata%/.emacs.d/server” in explorer and change the ownership of the directory to your windows username: