Windows 7 RC1 – Fixing blank screen / desktop at startup

Windows 7 RC1 – Fixing blank screen / desktop at startup
HOW TO FIX ? read and try on your PC

Windows 7 RC1 was released a little earlier than everyone expected and woohoo for that! Even though I’m now a what many describe as a Mac Fan boy I still have a decently powerful PC that I built sitting next to my drool worthy iMac that is still running XP.
There is nothing wrong with XP (cough) but I do like trying new shiny things and Windows 7 defiantly seems to be one of them. I could never run windows Vista on my PC because of the totally awesome ” Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding, but has successfully recovered.” error. Thanks Microsoft / Nvidia – your cool!
I never got that issue with Windows 7 Beta which was great but I didn’t find it stable enough to use. After all I do use my PC for some work related tasks such as testing websites in IE. I thought RC1 was going to be a close as the RTM (Release to the Manufacture) as I’m going to get without splashing out some hard earned so I thought I’ll give it a shot.
The install as seamless and very fast – awesome. First boot – blank screen after log in.. Damn. Second boot, blank screen and so on and so forth. Re installed twice and still the same thing.
I found many solutions but none fixed my error.
The issue I have seems to be my SLI Nvidia 7950GX2 – which is two cards in a single form factor. Since I can’t split them up I had to dig around in safe mode to work it out and “Hurray!” I did – and here is how I did it.

1. Boot that bad boy in Safe Mode
2. Click on Run then Control Panel
3. Open System then click on Device Manager
4. Expand the Display Adapters Tree
5. Right click on the second “NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 (Microsoft Corporate – WDDM) entry and select Disable (click yes on the pop up)
6. Right click on the first “NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 (Microsoft Corporate – WDDM) entry and select Uninstall. Click on OK when asked.
7. Restart the bad boy.
8. Let the PC boot normally (not in safe mode)
9. Windows will automatically install the default driver and re enable the second card. It’ll then ask to restart – DON’T – Click Restart Later
10. Head on over to http://www.nvidia.com and download the Windows 7 Drivers for the 7 Series GPU (version 185.81 beta is the current version at time of writing clocking in at 97.9mB) – Save it to a location that you can access in safe mode (not network drives. Desktop is a nice easy place)
11. Now that you have downloaded you will need to reboot back into safe mode (the Nvidia drivers won’t install because there is a previous installation that requires a restart… thanks Windows
12. Once rebooted, run the Nvidia installation.
    If you check the Display Adapters in Device manager after the installation you will see that it’ll just list “NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2″
13. Reboot again (normal boot this time, not safe mode) and if all went well you should now have your Windows 7 Desktop all up and running pretty like.

I don’t know if this is the best way of installing these drivers but I just know that it worked for me.
If it worked for you, or you are just feeling nice. Give it a digg or let me know on twitter or in a comment how you went.
Enjoy (by http://jamielesouef.com)

Windows 7 RC1 – Fixing blank screen / desktop at startup