Red led + driver = malfunctioning modes?

I swapped the emitter of a DX light to a red Cree (XR-E I think)
Despite the lower Vf, it works ok and doesn't seem to be overdriven, as the driver only puts out 350mA or so.

Unfortunately, using the original driver gave some weird results. The driver is a standard Chinese one: hi-lo-disco.
When I swapped the led, I got hi, then a half press gave me lo, but after that, half pressing did nothing.
No strobe and couldn't get back to hi.
If I left the light off for a minute or two, it would come back on hi, but then behave the same as above.
If I left it on hi, it would drop to lo after 30 seconds or so.

I resolved this by swapping out the driver for a single mode one I had laying around.

Thing is, I have discovered that I LOVE having a red flashlight for nocturnal trips to the bathroom etc.
I find that the red light doesn't wake my brain up like white light seems to, and it's easy to get back to sleep.

Because of my new found delight, I've decided that my red emitter deserves a nicer host.
I really like my Trustfire TR-803, so I decided to order another one and a 16 mode driver from DX.
The driver has a mode group that's lo-med-hi with no blinky nonsense, so this will be ideal for my nighttime light, but now I expect I'll have the driver problems again.

Can anyone explain why the red led could have caused the modes to mess up?
Is it something to do with the low Vf?
Can I compensate with a series resistor or something?

often times, a boost driver is used in single cell lights. Perhaps it has to do with the driver trying to "boost" the voltage from the cell's 3.7V to the ~2V Vf of the LED. Any of your single-cell drivers NOT have an inductor? You should try those. Or an AMC7135 based board.

an amc based board would be good if you could get two alkaline or nimh in series, i had good luck modding the akoray k106 1 mode to accept a red and boost off a single alkaline.

Sorry, I should have been more specific.
The original light I tried it in was a 1xAA. The circuit does indeed have an inductor.
The single mode driver I replaced it with also has an inductor and works perfectly, the problem was the modes on the original driver.
The driver I'll be using in the new light has no inductor, I guess because it's for CR123 lights.

I'm puzzled as to why this happened though, I just tried the driver again with a white Cree XP-G and the modes work fine.

It must be something to do with the different electrical characteristics of the red led that stopped the modes working.

I have the same concern with a 3aaa flashlight what I dont use and I put a red cree for my bicycle...

Looking forward for any help as well...