A friend suggested I try Armory to see if that works better with newly minted coins, so I'm giving that a go. Just need to get bitcoind up to date on my main pc...
I'll try asking on the irc channel as well, thanks.
Edit: Issue #355 opened.
God no, The Armory is even worse. Their latest version you need at least 64bit OS with over 8GB of memory for it to even start working properly. I've been using Multibit with great success.