Jamie Le Souef

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

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 12:02 pm and is filed under Microsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are 13 Responses to “ Windows 7 RC1 – Fixing blank screen / desktop at startup ”

1

Robbie Says

I can’t thank you enough for this!

Many kudos to you sir.

May 23rd, 2009 at 4:45 am

2

robert Says

THANK YOU

June 2nd, 2009 at 6:00 pm

3

Jamie Le Souef Says

@rober & @Robbie : your welcome :)

June 2nd, 2009 at 6:03 pm

4

Lowest Price Windows 7 Says

I was not a great fan of Vista, I am really hoping that Windows is faster and more stable.

In typical fashion Microsoft is having a firesale of sorts on their new OS, Windows 7. It’s available for pre-order for 50% or more off. They do this to build a quick fanbase and make some headlines. Good news is that we can save some big bucks until July 11th – that’s when the sale ends.

July 1st, 2009 at 9:40 am

5

Bai Zijian Says

For the first time in history, Microsoft is actually punctual on their schedule for the release of Windows 7.

Fantastic post on fixing the problem. Great help there.
.-= Bai Zijian´s last blog ..Free Xbox 360 Repair And Warnings About It =-.

July 25th, 2009 at 10:50 pm

6

iyouwe.info Says

really appreciate this! thank you!!!!!
thank you!!!!!!
.-= iyouwe.info´s last blog ..Can I have a bottle of elixir? =-.

October 3rd, 2009 at 3:00 pm

7

Dave Saunders Says

Thanks for this fix. I can’t wait for Windows 7, I’m looking to buy 2 computers soon after release.

October 13th, 2009 at 1:17 pm

8

Neil Mac Says

Hi Jamie,

Thanks fo your post. I am however still having difficulties with the black screen on boot up. I’m a bit of a newbee so im prob doing something stupid!!! I have followed your instructions to the letter however I am using a Samsung R520 laptop the display adaptor seems to be “Mobile Intel R Series Chip Set” I have downloaded the latest version of the driver from the Intel site but alas I still seem to have the same problem!!! Your help would be very much appriciated?

Warmest Regards

Neil

October 30th, 2009 at 6:40 pm

9

rohith Says

hey man,i have been having this problem on hp compaq presario cq60 210 tu,and it doesnt have nvidia its has got intel chipset,i have done your suggestion above and still wouldnt let me log into the laptop in normal mode,im not sure what else to do.i have observed that everytime i let the windows update the computer screen goes black after log in.Any suggestions regarding this?

i would really appreciate it

Thank you

November 28th, 2009 at 6:30 am

10

Myspace Layouts Says

Problems with Windows 7 already?

December 1st, 2009 at 7:16 am

11

Sen Liem Says

This is nice but it won’t fix my problem. I install Win7, and after bios it just goes to black/blank screen. No mouse no login. That’s it. Can’t even go to safe mode (pressing f8 does nothing). I can’t even go back to my winxp (had to do a winxp repair). Piece of sh$t. I have geforce 8800gt with latest winxp driver.

December 14th, 2009 at 4:00 am

12

Anthony A Says

Thank You Jamie!

Hours of frustration and dismay have ended! And I owe it all to you and the solution u posted above.

May God Bless You!

May 31st, 2010 at 5:58 am

13

Stephen Says

This didn’t work for me unfortunately…

Windows starts up perfectly fine, but I have no screen output; If I go to 640×480 I still get no output, but with the driver disabled/removed I can start normal mode, and safe mode always works without fail.

This is really frustrating me now, been trying to fix it for the whole morning and so far no luck! This was a clean install of windows with nothing more than an AV installed, and now I have to reinstall again.

July 6th, 2010 at 8:41 pm

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