Reply to S4 with Traktor 2.5 - problems with samples and FX

Greetings guys, a few clicks away from pulling my hair out on this one. Pretty behind the times in terms of mappings etc. so I really need some help...

Since updating to 2.5, I'm getting weird behaviour from my sample buttons. I used to be able to capture loops just by pressing the buttons or indeed capture samples of a selected length from decks A and B into C and D respectively. This worked whether the track was playing or not. I'm guessing if you're reading this you already know that, sorry. Anyway for some reason all my sample play buttons seem to want to grab directly from the loop recorder. When there is nothing in the loop recorder, a red error message at the bottom says, "WARNING: Can't copy from empty loop recorder". While this would be great as an option, I can't get it to change back and I have no idea how I messed it up in the first place. My final attempt was to restore the default, no luck. Any ideas?

Also, my selected FX in single mode now automatically changes to always be the same as FX1 in group mode. They used to be independent, and I can't find an option for this either. Is this just something I have to get used to? seems a bit silly.

Cheers