The octree code is in python - it will take a long time if your model has a large number of faces. No idea why it wouldn’t display however - does it work without the octree feature selected? Also, do you really need octrees? They are an optimisation trick, for very specific cases - its not something you use just because you can, and there are many cases where it can have no effect/make things worse.
As for newer versions of Blender, try this: [Yet Another Blender Egg Exporter (YABEE))
As Chicken is no longer supported I would recommend making the transition, though its not yet as feature complete (And I don’t believe it has octree support.), and is sort of a temporary solution until collada support reaches a suitable feature/reliability level.