Heh. I went through, trying different things, and finally isolated the problem. The problem was either the onboard USB controller, or bad drivers for the onboard LAN. The reason I'm not sure which it was is because there were so many things to try, I just went through trying two at a time... yeah, I know... hey, it works now, though! I finished the install with no problems, no BSODs.

Yay! Thanks to all who gave input, though.

I'm not sure why it decided to act up while the admin was playing with it, though. No clue what he did. Oh well. After two days of working on it, it is back up, fully operational. It's the proxy server. Guess that means no more games at w**k, huh? ;-)