132 blocks left and 99%

Anyone else have the issue with not being able to load the blockchain for Ethereum wallet and Mist? I have tried twice and both times it hit 99% and stopped. Finally I gave up on loading the wallet and uploaded my keystore file to myetherwallet to recover the eth sent to it. The reason I was wanting to load it is to start playing with the contract tool within it. Any suggestions? Can I utilize Parity for contracts instead?