nParticle Lifespan Problem (Age bug related?)

[nascentparadigm]

Hey everyone,
I started messing around with nParticles, and have noticed that there is a big problem with nParticles and lifespan modes.

If I have the lifespan is set to Live Forever or Constant, the nParticles will behave exactly as expected.  If I use Random Range or LifespanPP, however, the nParticles behave very unpredictably.  I have had occasions where every particle will live forever, or at a random frame that shows no noticeable pattern, all the remaining particles will disappear, but are still in the scene (as the count remains above 0, they just aren't visible).

I don't have an crazy mel scripts or anything driving attributes, I'm just using the default sliders and value fields on the nParticle shape, and can't figure out what's going on.  I'm not sure if it's related to the nParticle age bug I read about, but that only seemed to affect reading the particles attributes, not their behavior or rendering cabability.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[thnkr]

Which nParticle age bug? Where did you read about it?

[nascentparadigm]

I found a forum referring to the age bug here:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-692034.html

I did a couple more tests yesterday and found that if I repeatedly ran the simulation, it would eventually play as expected.  I'm tempted to think that it's a memory problem (I'm working on  POS machine), and am going to try and test that theory later today.

[nascentparadigm]

I've also discovered a new problem, this time evolving radiusPP.
What I have in my scene is a ground plane for collision purposes, and a second (animated) plane that emits nParticles.

What happens is, when I turn off, or otherwise try to change the rate on the emitter, all the water particles either drop down below the collision threshold of the ground plane object, or bounce into the air.  

Rate Keyed to 0 at frame 50:
http://particleart.com/download/rate0.avi

Rate Keyed to 1 at frame 50:
http://particleart.com/download/rate1.avi

This only ever happens when something is plugged into the radiusPP attribute, either the internal ramp, texture ramp, or expression.

Any ideas?