Sorry about your fan. I had to rebuild my graphics card when it just went wacky.
I finally received all the Vista updates. Took a week, even checking for them manually. It would be nice if they would install and just go to work.
Good news. After re-installing, the memory issues seem to have stopped. I can do large renders! (At least so far) The one I am rendering now is into 22 hours (Pentium 4, 1 thread) Not even half done. I hope it turns out....