Disk Utility hangs ("not responding") when attempting to Repair Disk on Time Capsule sparsebundle. Help.

Question

I am trying to improve the performance of my Time Machine backup and retrievals via my 2nd Gen. Time Capsule from my iMac Core 2 Duo hard drive with SL 10.6.8.  The incremental backups generally take 20 - 40 minutes each hour generally with fewer than 100 MB of data being backed up.  I have read through numerous threads on these forums about Time Capsule and Time Machine issues as well as the very helpful Pondini site (http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Home.html) and have tried many other suggestions (listed below), but have been unable to attempt a Disk Utility repair disk on the Time Capsule sparsebundle file.
After locating the sparsebundle 'file' in the finder under Shared/TC/Data, I am only sometimes able to drag the sparsebundle into the Disk Utility volumes and disk window.  About fifty percent of the time, Disk Utility hangs when attempting to drag in the sparsebundle.  If I am able to get it listed and click on "repair disk", then the beach ball begins to spin and nothing happens.  This occurs whether or not I first use AirPort Utility to "Disconnect All Users" from the Time Capsule.  I have given it over one hour to attempt the repair disk, but nothing happens, i.e., not a single message shows up in the detail window.  The beach ball just spins, and Disk Utility shows up in red as "not responding" under the Force Quit menu.
Also note that on my new Macbook Air, Time Machine runs quite quickly via this same Time Capsule from my new Macbook Air using OS X Lion (which seems to indicate that the Time Capsule drive itself is OK).
I would appreciate any tips on getting Disk Utility to run "repair disk" on my sparsebundle, as I seem to have exhausted most other options (see below) for improving Time Capsule performance -- aside of course, from wiping the Time Capsule clean and starting all over.... (which I really don't want to do, and from what I've read, has not helped some people who've tried this anyway).
Many thanks!
Although I would like to focus this thread on the Disk Utility / sparsebundle "Repair Disk" problem, I should mention that I have tried the following other things:
1.  Repaired disk permissions on my hard drive
2.  Used Disk Utility to run "repair disk" on my hard drive after starting up from a SuperDuper external backup
3.  Run DiskWarrior on my hard drive, again, from a separate startup disk
4.  Did the "full reset of Time Machine", a la Pondini Troubleshooting #A4
5.  Changed my computer and Time Capsule names to simple short names with only alphanumeric characters and no spaces
6.  Ensured that my Time Capsule is being accessed only via ethernet
7.  Relaunched the finder
8.  And finally, attempting to use Disk Utility to repair the sparsebundle - thus the nature of this post

Answer 1

OK, no takers out there, but I answered my own question (sort of).
The answer is that even though Disk Utility shows up as "not responding" under the Force Quit menu and appears to hang, it is actually still working.  A bit of patience shows that after about an hour, my Disk Utility was able to show the 1.44 TB Time Machine sparsebundle from Time Capsule in the disk window on the left hand side.  Once this appeared, I was able to click on "Repair Disk" (note that prior to doing this, I had to "Disconnect All Users" from my Time Capsule using the Airport Utility program; otherwise you will get a "could not unmount disk" error).  Again, the Repair Disk function appeared to hang Disk Utility as it showed up as "not responding" under the Force Quit menu.  However, after about 8 hours, Disk Utility did run the entire Repair Disk protocol on the sparsebundle.  The results DO NOT show up in the Disk Utility details window - so even if you are patient enough to let it complete, you will not see anything and may think that nothing happened.  However, you can find the familiar results of the Repair Disk function by looking on Console - find the "DiskUtility.log" under Files: ˜/Library/Logs.
Unfortunately, I was hoping to find a problem that would have been subsequently repaired which would result in dramatically increased Time Capsule speed, but this was not the case.  Disk Utility showed everything to be "OK" and I am stuck with a very slow Time Capsule....
(And of note, my new Macbook Air (OS Lion) Time Machine functions blazingly fast on both backup and retrieval to and from the very same Time Capsule - even though, these are occuring wirelessly via AirPort -- granted the size of this sparsebundle is an order of magnitude smaller at this point, i.e., only 10 GB right now)
Would still be happy to hear of any similar experiences or tips on getting Time Capsule to work more quickly.