Nevermind, I've figured it out. Some how a SubSurf got applied to the meshes. I honestly don't remember nor understand why I did that.

 As for the Armature not working, I think that happened because I (at one point) placed it on a seperate layer for a short while to make minor changes.

 Thankfuly I still have a copy of the original all on one layer. I've just back tracked to that and removed the Subsurfs and all seems okay again. ^_^

Thanks for taking the time to help. I'm sure someone else will run into this again at some point.