If you are getting a blank page after creating a new site (and often after creating a new web application) you may need to modify the Application Pool associated with the web application.  Open IIS and select the pool then advanced properties.  I am running SharePoint 2010 on a Windows 7 64 bit installation.

Ensure ‘Enable 32-Bit Applications’ is set to False (by default this is set to True). 

In addition, I have set the Ping Enabled to False (default is True).  This will ensure that when walking through the code IIS will not time out.