[FIX] Win 7 x64/86 Service Pack 1 Installation on G53/G73 (Sandy Bridge + MSI AB/EVGA Precision users)

Hi guys,
alot of users are experiencing crashes and instability after the upgrade to SP1 in Windows 7.
In the majority of the cases, a restore point previous to SP1 installation or an unistall of it fixes the problem, but a downgrade is not always a good thing. SP1 offers various fixes already available in Windows Update, along with some tweakings that will surely help.

This small tip is intended to those who have MSI Afterburner and EVGA Precision installed for GPU Overclocking.

Users with no OC programs as the two above, most likely will not have any issue with the system stability, as it seems that without those programs, hence at stock clocks, gpu performs as it should.

Overview:
After some digging around, it has been confirmed that MSI Afterburner (v2.0) and EVGA Precision (v.2.0.2) are not compatible with Service Pack 1 stand alone installation/upgrade.
This problem was aknowledged by Unwinder, both programs coder.
It has come to my attention, however, that even MSI AB version 2.1.0 and 2.2.0 have the same problem althought its said to be fixed.
The problem seems related to the newer Sandy Bridge motherboard that the G series uses, mostly in the form of how the programs acts to Overclock the card.
Without going into technical issues, lets say that it disables the card to work correctly on the bus on which is connected (in this case, pcie-ex 16x) killing the driver on 3d apps.

Installation Steps:
- Before upgrading to SP1, unistall MSI AB and EVGA Precision completely using a clean way. By "Clean" unistallation, you should select "No" when prompted to keep saved profiles for further use <-- IMPORTANT!

- Reboot <- IMPORTANT!

- Download latest MSI Afterburner Beta here: MSI Afterburner 2.2.0 Beta 5 (2011-07-05) - Guru3D.com Forums (at the time of writing is 2.2.0 beta 5) or download newer betas in the appropriate forum section here: MSI AfterBurner Overclock Application Discussion forum - Guru3D.com Forums

- Don't install it yet. Instead, start Service Pack 1 installation and wait till it completes and reboots.

- After the reboot, Windows should notify that Service Pack 1 has been succesfully installed.

- Unpack/Install MSI Afterburner and launch it.

- Set your desired clocks, save it in the profiles slot, the configure the programs accoding to your tastes.

- When using OSD options, the Rivatuner server should launch automatically (small icon with a purple counter on top-left side). As an additional note, to check if MSI AB has been installed "clean", the RivaTuner Server app should be blue-colored instead of red. This may be a glitch on my side, but i clearly remember it was red.

- Open the OSD and configure the OSD display to use VECTOR 2D instead of the default-middle one option ( <-- IMPORTANT), VECTOR 3D. Raster option works as well, but it doesnt clear the framebuffer, so everytime a game or benchmarks loads a checkpoint/another scene, it simply will crash.

- Now everything should work perfectly fine as it was before upgrading to SP1.

Misc:
- EVGA Precision, at his current release, still have some problems. Unwinder develops MSI AB on top of EVGA Precision, and releases an updated EVGA Precision based on beta development and feedback of AB.

- Get a cool skin for it AMPLIFY - Skins - Guru3D.com Forums and [Skin] InD 06 - Guru3D.com Forums

- It may work on previous models non-SB too however i cant confirm it.

- If you still have problems, please check if NET 3.5 is enabled/installed. You can check/enable it by launching "Add Remove" (i forgot the english name, foreign user here) application under control panel-> then select "Install or remove Windows Features" in the left side. Check NET 3.5 options if those are disabled.

- I hope this helps ATI users as well, as im an NVIDIA user.

This small step-to-step has been confirmed working from other users as well. Therefore if you try my method, please report back if its working for you or not.
Have fun