Just in case anyone else is having the same problem I did a complete removal of Mathematica versions 8 and 9, including all Application Data folders. Then did a fresh install and The code now runs in around 5s on my i5-2500k/8g ram windows 7 system. Not sure what the issue was, but this did fix the problem.
Update
Well seems this "solution" was premature, as the problem is back. Seems this is a known issue at Wolfram and should be fixed in the future.