I just got a new hard drive and installed windows 7. I downloaded all the latest drivers for my sound card, video card and directX. I installed COD4. I played a quick game in vanilla format and everything seemed cool. I then updated the patches by installing 1.6 and 1.7 respectively. I start the game up, it's in some low resolution so I do a quick change on the graphics settings and the screen goes black. I can hear the menu sounds and music but see nothing. I can't minimize or anything. I end the process and try reopening COD4 just to see a black screen with the menu music again. After doing a little searching I see other people have had this problem but I can't seem to find a real solution. Just wondering if anyone here has any ideas? Thanks.

Turn off that dual vid card support in the graphic options. I think that should take care of it.

Nah I did that originally when I first opened it. But even if I wanted to change it now, I can't because I can't access the menu.

Okay, well after a ton of searching I found out the problem. It has to do with Windows 7 so this may be useful to other people in the future. The reason the game kept crashing was because it tried to launch with a default refresh rate set at 60 Hz. So I thought, ah this is simple to change. I go into the display settings and change the monitor refresh rate from 59 to 60 Hz. However, after I hit "apply" it switched back to 59 Hz. It kept doing this no matter what I did. So I made sure all my drivers were updated and tried it again. No success. I search google and I see that a ton of people are having the same problem. Apparently if your monitor doesn't EXACTLY have a 60 Hz refresh rate it will automatically switch to 59 Hz. Most 60 Hz monitors are actually 59.994 Hz. Luckily it can be fixed using the Nvidia control panel so I don't have to wait for an update. You can create a custom resolution with 60 Hz as the refresh rate and it will stay set.