The furnace texture changes from 62 (a lit furnace) to 61 (a non lit furnace)
when a chunk, with an active furnace in it, is reloaded. The furnace still smelts, but it appears to be inactive. This happens on multi player, but I haven't tried single player.
Cannot reproduce. Placed a furnace, put gold and lava in it, waited for the first item to smelt, disconnected, saved and stopped server, restarted server, relogged, and it was fine.