Lost in space, help sought

[aroma]

I switched to the latest build using Max 5.1
Results are totally shocking. The standard settings produce blotches all over the place when using a VRay light; "glass" is a disaster, the standard caustics come out like somebody spilt seven buckets of paint all over the place. Earlier scenes that had excellent rendering results - both in time and quality - now come out like stuff ripe for the junkbelt. And I am beginning to feel the same adversion I had years ago with Cebas' finalrender: all I find is technical information for mathematicians and computer whizzes, cannot find user friendly "things to do in case of" tutorials.
Could anybody lead me a bit on the path to enlightment ebfore I ax the whole thing and revert to older versions of the plugin that I started to like so much?
Thanks
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[natty]

is it an old scene you are trying to render ?.... if so you will have to update all the mats to new vray mats ....

[aroma]

Thanks for reaching out Natty. I'm talking about recent scenes, set up with the latest non beta version 03r...
A thingI have not mentioned yet is the fact that -as an example - a scene that took 3.40min to render with 03r now, without changing any setting takes a whopping 17 minutes. I did not find the culprit in the settings.
I also quickly set up a plane, sphere, box, all VRay mapped, GI standard on -no changes in settings - transparancy for glass effect, fog color, glossiness slightly down, affect shadows on. VRay light and target light with shadow map on, inverse square. Result plane with blotchy bumps, rock hard caustics with pure white speckles.
I now reduced caustics effect multiplier, which removes the white speckles. However the plane looks really ugly still.
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