So I did that and it still crashed. At that point I decided something was seriously hosed and ended up reinstalling the thing. It works fine now, even with all the old data files.
I probably should have tried that from the get-go, but I figured that couldn't be where the problem was for some reason.
At some point I would really like to know what actually went wrong, but at least it's fixed now
Probably will just end up being chalked up as a mystery. Perhaps it was a butterfly.
Thanks all,