i read this at wc3c yesterday or something, seems u got it fixed then.
and you cant edit when you select multiple meshes from my knowlege, you have to select them and edit the one you have selected.
I suggest Edit poly, flexible and user friendly tools, once your done ,remember to add the "edit(or convert) to patch" modifier to your mesh to convert all the faces to traingles. I cant check my max atm since i just ran out of the trial.
But thats my advice, TDR is good with hes, but hes is far too advance atm i think..
and when your doing polycount tool thing, dont count by the poly, count by the triangle ( i think..)