Hey your support is really awesome Tom!
I just togged 'Wait for Exit' to NO, loaded a game, it froze as you said (but had no interface sound, total froze), then changed it to YES, re-load etc and it now when I exit mame it works. I noticed a refreshing of the interface now, so it's like it wasn't quite doing it before.
Also I feel bad, No! the older version is not crappy, I didn't mean it like that, it's just the new one is really slick and nice!
Thanks for your support.
PS haha my xbox controller won't scroll 'down' in the games list for some reason, it's sorta bad laggy but scrolls up ok and the other menus jump around snappy (home, return etc), games run fine with the controller, just the interface hmm.