The issue you describe with the Cloth Room sounds like an issue with Collisions. If you have the cloth intersecting or it starts out colliding with the figure, it will lock up the simulation.  Make sure that the cloth is not intersecting anything that it has Collisions with. One trick I use is to turn the Figure or the Cloth to a contrasting Color and view the scene in Texture Shaded Mode. You see little bits of Red in the white of the cloth, you know you need to tweak something. Scaling (and then Scale back over the first few frames) can resolve this type of error, allowing the rest to go ahead.

I think others have responded to the rest, but if not let me know.

ratscloset
aka John