Module-heavy site quits without error on W7 dev machine
Okay. I do not understand why but it seems the answer here actually is the answer in the other question. Here's what you do:

In Apache's httpd.conf find the line

# Server-pool management (MPM specific)
Include conf/extra/httpd-mpm.conf


And un-comment it so the httpd-mpm.conf file is run. Then load up that file and go to the bottom where you'll see this:

# WinNT MPM
# ThreadsPerChild: constant number of worker threads in the server process
# MaxRequestsPerChild: maximum  number of requests a server process serves
&lt;IfModule mpm_winnt_module&gt;
    ThreadStackSize      8388608
    ThreadsPerChild      150
    MaxRequestsPerChild    0
&lt;/IfModule&gt;


Not including the ThreadStackSize - add that line with the nice big number. And the crash stops. Essentially I was right in my diagnosis - the data structure being built is too big but it's too big for the thread, not the overall memory allocation.

The reason I'm confused is that, as far as I can see, that module is not loaded and run in Apache, but maybe it's not configurable and always runs.

Anyway this works.