Update only a specific folder in a sparseimage ?

[dnanian]

Well, for (1), did you check the display properties to verify whether it's set to "Millions"?

For 2) any diagnostics in the Console?

For 3), similar -- any crash log with useful information?

You could, of course, roll back, but you don't really know what's wrong yet, so it's hard to know if rolling back will fix it...