1) When I pull up the root playlist, it shows about 23,000 tracks. Then when I engage repeat and random, the track count doesn't change as it should. But, if I engage random and repeat on a smaller playlist and then pull up the root playlist, the actually number of tracks (20,500 or so) appear. I might be wrong here, but I didn't think that it mattered if random was turned on before or after a playlist was played...
Mmm, that's an odd one. It shouldn't make any odds when random is turned on, nor even how big the playlist is.

2) (Clearly a little bug.) After playing that root playlist, the player shows the "No Playlist" message on next boot. Seems the playlist is just too large to store between power cycles..
On this one you're well in excess of the current limitation; it'll hopefully be extended sometime in the 3.0 series.

Peter