PLEASE HELP: Can't get SL to completely connect.

Okay - first off... this is for my girlfriends setup, not my own. She honestly doesn't know much at all about computers so I'm trying to get things fixed for her.

Here's the problem... when either one of us tries to log in on her computer, the login process goes all the way to the "Downloading Clothing" point then just stops. What we end up with is pretty much just a blank horizon... no building, no ground, no avatar, no other people, no nuthin'. The only operational thing is the inventory, which is downloaded fine and you're able to browse around it just as you normally would. The L$ display in the upper right never updates to how much you have. And despite a message saying "your clothing is still downloading but everyone else can see you... yada yada yada" nothing ever shows up but the inventory and the location name in the menu bar. Doing an alt-1 shows that the client FPS is thru the roof but you're not actually connected to the sim (I'm guessing) cus the simFPS / runtasks / physics / everything else is all at 0. The interesting part is that if I'm logged on to my computer when she tries to logon, I still get online/offline notifications for her.

This problem first started immediately after the first 1.5 release. LL was contacted and they told her that her Integrated Intel Graphics wasn't good enough anymore. Okay. Fair Enough. Unfortunately, she doesn't have an AGP slot so we upgraded her to a Nvidia GeForce2 MX 400 PCI. All was good until the last release. Since 1.5.4 came out, the same problem has resurfaced. LL was contacted again but this time they told her that her connection wasn't good enough and if things didn't magically fix themselves in 7 days to call them back. However, it's already been 4 days at this point and I don't think another 7 is going to solve any problems. On top of that, her connection is and always has been better than mine. Of course since this is the exact same problem as we had before we upgraded the video card, my first assumption is that in 1.5.4 something was changed where her graphics card was no longer good enough again. However, before we start gutting her desktop to get her an AGP card, I realllllly would appreciate any feedback / suggestions / similar stories that anyone can provide. We are getting SOOOOO frustrated trying to get SL to work on her PC. And if it turns out that her hardware needs to be upgraded in order to get back on, then LL really needs to update the minimum reqs on their homepage. :-/

She's using the latest nvidia driver. There is no router. No firewall software. Any virus protection is disabled while SL is running. The only other major program running at the same time as SL is Yahoo Messenger. The system has been swept many times and is free of viruses/ spyware. Here's the hardware specs:

2.59 GHz Intel Celeron
Windows XP Home Ed
Cable connection w/ no router
768 MB RAM
Nvidia GeForce2 MX 400 (64MB)
DirectX 9.0C

Note: all SL settings have been stripped down to pretty much bare minimum (local lighting, shadows, etc.)

Has she uninstalled and reinstalled SL?

sorry... forgot to mention that. But yes.. twice I think.