SOLVED for me, ... (until next time)

Hope this works for you guys too.
AMD Catalyst 11.11 drivers + CAP 1 (WHQL/signed) was released today (15nov2011):
AMD Win7 64bit,
AMD Win7 32bit,
Release Info.
Been waiting for this one to see if anything changed, and apparently it had. Did my normal uninstall, safe mode, cleaner, reboot, new driver. After that, no more hang on "Initializing Command Manager..." text. Happy
