Well, after a lot of dicking around, I never could make up a Windows Live CD. I downloaded a program (fighting with my virus protector the whole time), installed it, researched on the web WTF you're supposed to do with it and the instructions they provided were so poorly written and incomplete I never could get that shit right.
So I had Mrs. E take her machine to the local boys where I know they've already got all this Windows live shit, and can figure out what the problem was -- which is, btw, a "process initialization BSOD." Youtube had a short video on how to deal with it, but as it required booting from a Windows Live CD or thumb drive, I never got past Go.
All the computer boys have to do is go to the Windows/Win32 folder and delete a file called "bootcat.cache" file.
This Youtube describes the exact BSOD I'm seeing:
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvZDGpFEHDQ[/youtube]
As I couldn't get into Safe Mode and as I couldn't boot from a !@#$% thumb drive or CD because I couldn't make the Windows Live CD that they told me I needed to make in order to come up an "iso" file of some type, after about 2 hours of jacking around with the shit, I just unplugged the damned thing.
(User Account tells me I don't "have permission" to download and install Make PE_3, which apparently is the program that makes up the boot disk. Yeah, right. I'm the f'n Admin of the computer (that does NOT mean I know WTF I'm doing, btw) and I don't "have permission."
So after I got completely frustrated with all this, I went ahead and ordered the machine linked above, along with an extra 4 GB of DDR3, an external card reader, and a wireless keyboard and mouse.
I've gone ahead and made up a bootable system disk, but it's too late -- the bastards have her old computer. Once we get it back, we'll rescue a few files she's got on it, then I'm gonna shitcan the f'n thing. I'm tired of all the bullshit.