Reinstall it?

Genius answer.

In lieu of that, any less nuclear option and as asked - does anyone have any idea what happened?

It got corrupted in a catastrophic crash. When it happened to me I reinstalled it. It's hardly a nuclear option as it doesn't even affect settings.

It says video memory on the blue screen. Try updating GPU drivers as there's not much else you can do.

@djrikki2

I'll cast my vote for a hardware failure that caused the damage to the system. Incidentally, you were using Vegas at the time.

On the Windows Search Box, type View Reliability History.

Double Click on the last red circle with the X in the center.

The details are at the bottom. There may be .dmp files associated with this error that most mortals can't read, but you can open a case with Microsoft and someone on this Earth is bored enough to read them and help you out.

They did for me.