I remembered.. I figured I'd answer my own question for anybody else who has this problem in the future. It's the windows seven areo display that, for some reason, screws it. If you're running off of a radeon 7850M video card and when you open your viewer you get a solid black screen, a solid white screen or a two toned screen this is the problem.
Go to control panel > apperance and personalization > personalize and select one of the "Basic and High Contrast" themes. I didn't even have to shut down the frozen viewer. It insantly loaded correctly.
I have no idea why this problem exists..