QGIS 2.4.0 issues with "Select By Location" for complex polygon and points and alternatives

I am attempting to use the "select by location" tool to select polygons from one layer that overlap with certain polygons in a different layer. Unfortunately this is causing QGIS to freeze. Doing a bit of research, it seems like this is a noted bug see here. However I have been able to successfully perform this operation with a simpler set of layers.

As such I am wondering if: 1.This seems like a hardware issue or a bug 2 if there is an alternative method for achieving something like this?

I have also attempted to use v.select from the processing menu tools but this seems to crash also (although I haven't tested this extensively).

I am using QGIS 2.4.0, Windows 32-bit version. I have better processing power and the windows 64 bit version at home and will be able to check tonight if this works on that computer.

Please let me know if there are any other details required, and thank you in advance.