I have experienced many of those same symptoms, especially when it ignores the overrides. I haven't been able to do anything that consistently reproduces the problem so I don't know what may be causing it. It just seems like totally random timing.
For the OSD, the battery icon and histogram show perfect all the time (however the histogram doesn't actually "work" like it should). Also, if I selected to not show the boot splash screen, it seemed like the OSD would never show up.