Office 2003 "Save" Error Deleting Original File

[Brennen]

First time for everything...

Alright, so one of our end users has been having some issues saving Word documents (though other office products might also be suffering the same fate), where certain files -- saved files -- are opened, edited, and then lost after attempting to save the file. Initially I assumed the user was deleting the files somehow since he couldn't give me an example (intermittent error), so I kept the issue open and monitored his machine in the situation it happens again. Well, it did. What happens is he has an existing file, say "Trumpets 2008.doc", and opens it for editing. After writing a page or two he hits the save button, but receives an error that the he does not have access to the file. He then has the option to either change the file name and save it (which WORKS), or click cancel, which then forces Word to unexpectedly shut down and remove (somehow) the original file and in some cases the temp file for auto-recovery. If this isn't strange enough, the original document is nowhere to be seen at the time of saving, and the error claims that your file is named ~wf123.tmp*, but despite this you cannot save using the original document name until after everything is closed.

For the time being I have him renaming the file as me makes changes, and then making occasional backups. Before I troubleshoot this extensively on his PC though, I figured I would do some research. Turns out hundreds of people have had this same issue in one manner or another, but I have found no resolutions as of yet. I also did a quick search here but found no similar threads (sorry if I overlooked one). I prefer not wasting his time with useless troubleshooting and figure out the actual reason this stuff happens, so I do not plan to uninstall/reinstall until I am out of options.

Some (likely) unimportant details: While the problem is intermittent, the majority of times this happens is when he is accessing files on our network shares. While that is likely just because he works off the network more often than off his PC, I thought I would mention it. He is using XP Pro SP3, and Word 2003 with all updates. No recent changes have been made to the PC and he has full Administrative privileges to his PC. Same applies to the network share he is accessing. Machine itself is in fine working condition. Problem does not appear to have any sort of pattern, as it happens at random times with random files (size, location, etc). According to all other threads on this issue, it isn't a hardware issue and it isn't a user error.