Gamebreaking glitch PS3

When I spawn with no hands and no weapon, I hit the button to switch weapons (Triangle on PS3, “Y” on Xbox, and whichever key you bound to swap weapons on PC), the game will hesitate slightly and my hands will appear with my pistol.  I hit the button again and it swaps at normal speed to my primary weapon.  This works every time for me.  For the blue box issue, I've experienced this a few times and each time it happens I have to hard restart the console but it usually works upon re-boot.  You mention the Euro region, is that your region?  If it's not you will always receive best results playing in your own region.