Friday I tried to fix the (Windows XP) 3D rendering on the laptop. Now XP simply can't boot (crashes trying to load the AGP module). I need to use an XP Pro disk to repair the installation, but I don't have one of those (the XP instance is the one that came pre-installed on the machine from the factory). Tried Soni's Winternals disk, but it wasn't able to get us around the problem (despite seeming to have the capability to disable the problematic driver).

It's the same story as with the dripping faucet; you start out with an annoying, but not actually problematic situation and with dilligent work and effort you turn it into a sopping mess all over your nice clean floors. I'm going to not think about it for a few days and get less annoyed before I go back to try to fix it again.