I dont know why, because on my previous 4 installations my copy of photoshop 6 (ahahahhah.... ._.;;) has saved stuff fine, however, on this new installation (windows 7) it has had a lot of trouble saving files, it works if i try multiple times, but usually on the first attempt (even with ctrl+s, but especially when using Save As) it says "Could not save <filepath> because the file is already in use or was left open" and then completely deletes the saved file. this doesnt result in a loss of work (because the picture is still in RAM) but sure as hell is a pain. has anyone had any simmilar issues? if so, how did you fix it?

I've never had this problem. I even researched it, and found nothing like what you said. It seems like maybe it's something else on your computer that's messing it up. I'd just uninstall then install it again, that might clear up something that has gone wrong.

I got Gimp

Have you tried running it as admin?

i am, and i can save files always, it just glitches heavily the first time i save a file i've edited, and spazzes out and deletes the file, which you can imagine gets annoying.
might need to just get gimp again, but i do like my photoshop..

Had exactly the same problem, saved crashed and was on W7. I went back to Vista until W7 is properly released. Now PSCS4 works brilliantly.