Card(s) failure or drivers for sudden black screen? =(

Ha ha... I suppose I could do some script editing with all my free time... heh. Really, though, like I said I'm just a bit gun-shy, and want to do this correctly instead of cramming everything back in there and giving it another go. I wanted to be sure that there wasn't anything else I should have done/be doing before I do, yuno.... Putting things out there just in case, you get me.

Well, I'll probably do it in the morning (I'm on vacation, so I have all sorts of time to sweat on this thing), and see what happens, if there aren't any more "you-should-do-this" suggestions for the problem-preventative, overly-cautious, more-than-a-little-paranoid fixit chick.

Thanks again for all you guys do!!

Okay, I reinstalled the 7970's this morning, and started it up, and to my delighted relief, it did not just stay on the black screen, but booted up normally.

I went to run the Catalyst installer for the 14.4 drivers, but when I checked device manager, it said that it was still using the 14.200.1004.0 driver from the 5670 that I was using temporarily.... I'm not sure why that happened, maybe because I DL'ed the 14.4 package from AMD's site while I was running the 5670? I ran that same 14.4 installer a second time, and noted in the custom install check-off that the 14.2 driver was "up to date." WTF??

So I've just DL'ed the 14.4 AGAIN just now, and am going to give it another go.

Also, device manager is only showing ONE of my 7970's though both are running, and I'm praying that this anomaly is because of the transition from the 5670 driver to the newer ones.... but I might be fooling myself.

The more-than-greater-than-little-petite-paranoidal-fixated-chicken`s-egg-hatched-chick's freak-outedness is reaching a new high. Am I missing something?

Thanks again for all you helpers do to help! =)

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Just ran the newly DL'ed 14.4 Catalyst package, and it STILL!! Still shows the 14.2 driver as being "up to date." What is the freaking problem here?? I had the 14.4 driver before all this shiat hit the fan yesterday... *sigh*

I'm sad to report that this procedure did not work. Although, I did leave off #5. *wink*

After all that, it's still sticking with the 14.200.1004.0 driver, that was uninstalled. I'm floored. To go into more detail, I did not start the DDU while running windows normally. We had a brief power outage today, so I took that opportunity to start in safe mode, and began it there. I ran it to delete the AMD drivers as I did with the NVIDIA drivers a few days ago, and it completed successfully. I ran it to complete and NOT restart immediately, so I could run CCleaner for junk files and clean out the registry, as advised, still in safe mode (you didn't specify if that mattered, and I didn't think it really did).

After the restart, I ran the 14.7 Catalyst package, and it also completed with no problem. What I did take note of was after this restart from safe mode, as it did in my last effort, Windows immediately went to search for drivers for the "new hardware", and it always says that it found them and installed them, so I wonder if this automatic Windows driver search and install that's screwing things up. Because it always completes before the Catalyst package has installed. Is there a way to stop it from doing that?

Other than there's still only one card that shows up in device manager, that's all I can think of to add here.

Thanks as always for all you guys do!

**I also have to edit more than a couple of times for lack of clarity because of frustration... heh.

***okay, I did a search to see if there was a way to stop Windows from doing that, and was able to do it under the group policy settings, as the first method involved "changing device installation settings" which was already set to the "let me choose what to do", as I never let Windows automatically update itself. Soooo... I'll give IamLegend's procedure another go! Check back in a bit...

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Another update:
After enabling that group setting, whose full title is "Prevent installation of devices not described by other policy settings", I restarted and tried to install the 14.7 package again. But it crashed. And it crashed again. So I ran the 14.4 package and, while it actually made it through the installation procedure, there was a problem. Guess what failed? Here's part of the log:

Catalyst™ Install Manager Installation Report
09/12/14 19:32:26
AMD Display Driver
Final Status: Fail
Version of Item: 14.100.0.0000
Size: 90 Mbytes

Of course, by now I've come to the disgusted conclusion that this "fix" by MS, which was only supposed to prevent WINDOWS from installing whatever driver happened to be convenient, has prevented ME from installing AMD's driver pack. SO, I disabled the group setting and restarted again. Windows went looking for the driver for the hardware again, and I was amused to note that this is what it came up with:

Standard VGA Graphics adapter
6.1.7600.16385

...instead of the 14.2 which I was expecting. What I was NOT expecting was, after all of THAT SHIAT, and successfully installing the 14.7 package and restarting again, that device manager says the current 7970 driver is (and, of course, it's still only showing the ONE card instead of two)... wait for it!

14.200.1004.0

Yes. It seems I'm doomed to keep this driver, and never to update again. Perhaps I'm being punished for something. I just don't know. Of course, I have no idea if it was Windows' auto driver install that is the problem; that's just what struck me as plausible, I guess. *sigh*

On another note, why does a CMD window open after the Catalyst install, with
"Administrator: https://secure.amd.com/di?VID1=1002&DID1=6798&PID1=AMD%20Radeon%20Gr...(runs out of space, and can't enlarge window) Is the install package calling home? It's done this after every successful install that I've run. What's up with this??

I guess if I can't nail down a solution to this card driver fiasco, maybe someone can explain something else.