Hi Everyone! Thanks for your suggestions and advice. This one problem of mine is now fixed and my PC is a blazingly fast, useful-once-again, even-the-wife-admires-it, computer.
And the solution was... drum roll...
replace the freekin hard drive.
After the hard drive was replaced, Win 7 installed and I was browsing the web within 25 minutes.
Here were my clues: everything I said that was happening on my first post was the result of no data getting into the system. The CPU would be a zero if there were not bits flowing in, even the hard drive activity would be a zero if it couldn't send the bits (for whatever reason).
Anyways, if anyone else has similar problems, here's one anectdote for replacing the hard drive as a first test. Heck, if it hadn't been the hard drive, I had 7 days to return it, so how could I lose?