Your situation sounds unique. Are you using any external plugins / scripts or shaders with Maya. Can you reproduce the issues on a fresh install and a fresh prefs folder? Also, are you deleting history as you model, especially when you combine and separate meshes? -edit- Also, Autodesk has a tendency to push bad builds out…
I have one external script for detaching faces, it auto clear history so I don't have to do it manually. Oh I complained about construction history in Maya since day one I started working on it ;) And pie menus are my thing. I always call marking menus pie menus because it sounds better for me, it is just better name. So I…