Well, after having an uneventful Sunday, I resorted to the arduous task of reformatting.... again. Eh, no worries, all my programs are installed to a different HD so all I gotta do is re-register them when I run them.
Anyway, after reinstalling Maya to a fresh OS I rendered my freighter scene with no problems. Then, I reinstalled Mental Ray 1.5 and tried again... CRASH! So I removed MR and tried again. Rendered once, twice, crash. Hrmmm... What could be the issue here? I can't render scenes now. I'm at a loss here and the fact of not knowing whats really going on has me in a bind. I don't want to spend money on a new card to find out that wasn't the problem. Any ideas?