As @dangermouse77 stated, the early part of this year was a difficult time for Gridcoin. The network and wallet are now very stable. I invite you to try again, and I think your experience this time around will be better. Please come to our Discord server at https://discord.gg/fvP2zEk and we will help!
The official site at https://www.gridcoin.us/index.htm does have a lot of good information.
We are doing extensive testing of block protocol version 10 (which includes CBR), to ensure we do not have a repeat of the network instability earlier this year. We aim for the transition to CBR to be very smooth.