After a week of hard pounding, my computer is still up and running. I think it’s all healthy again (after a complete Windows reinstall). I lost so much time on that thing that it would have been worth buying a new one rather than go through all the troubleshooting steps (remove all AGP and PCI cards, reinstall, crash…).
When in doubt, format and reinstall Windows… painful, but sometimes necessary 🙁
Or you could get a Mac 😀