Upload savegame you are failing to load somewhere.
Make sure you have installed game to a location you have write access to and it does not have full path length longer than supported by your file system.
Check health of your hardware to make sure your disk drive is not failing
So… I had a talk with a good friend about this - who knows much more about software (and even more about hardware) than I do - and I’ve told him that I knew someone who had this software-problem where it sometimes just randomly overwrites files with spaces.
His response was (in that order): “Oh no, that’s probably the computer’s fault, not the software… run memtest86 (RAM), then a chkdsk (hard drive) and if there’s no errors, get your processor (CPU) checked!”
After some brainstorming, we found some other possible error sources (and solutions) for this specific situation. Here’s the complete list we’ve worked out, ranging from most likely to unlikely:
RAM and HDD are usually easy enough to test, but a reported failiure on these parts might be on the motherboard instead of the part itself. It’s also possible that this bug is a result of write cache and will not show up in any test. Turning write caching off for the hard drive might fixes it.
CPU and Raid Controller (it doesn’t matter if it’s RAID 0, 1, 10 or any of the “exotic” ones) are a bit harder to test, sometimes test routines can be found on the manufacturer’s homepage, but it’s not always straight forward how to run these tests.
It’s also a good idea to check the connections between everything before running off and buying new parts. Sometimes it’s just a loose plug or connection and it might not even show up in any test.
Then, on the software side (this one’s for you, @Optymistyk, so give it a try):
Sometimes an installation, be it from a disk or from a download, can be damaged. Maybe something was read wrongly from the disk, maybe the internet had a hickup and messed up a byte during transfer. Whatever it might be, installing the software anew might fixes this. It’s unlikely that it shows it that way, but still possible, and (in the case of Cataclysm: DDA) downloading it again is usually not that big of a problem.
On the other hand, it could also be the operating system. A virus, a messed up update or other things can lead to weird OS behavior, resulting in damaged files. That it doesn’t show this behavior on other games/software might be owed to the fact that some software interact with the OS in a way that no other does. A reinstallation of the OS, or a repair (saves time at the cost of probability of fixing it), or SFC on Windows might fix this.
I hope I’ve got everything covered…
On a side note, since @Optymistyk mentioned missing checks for saving it properly (which are in place, as far as I can tell): These checks do not work if the file gets corrupted after it’s “saved” to the disk (hence the “turn off write cache” suggestion), or if it’s already corrupted before/during the saving process and writes the bad information onto the disk (defective RAM/CPU).