Thanks Dave!
I misspoke when I said 2gb of RAM…that’s what’s allocated to AE. I have 4gb (3.25 in 32bit XP).
However, I did finally solve the problem. There was one single Illustrator layer that had somehow gone corrupt. I don’t know what caused it, but re-saving it as new Illustrator file via Illustrator, then reloading it in AE – well, that solved the problem. I’m glad it wasn’t anything bigger than that. I just opened the project withe the comps closed, went through every comp one by one until I found it.
Thanks again!