DITA templates erratic in FM10 on Win 7 32-bit

Question

We are a writing team of 4 - two using Windows XP 32-bit, one using Windows 7 32-bit and until recently I was using Windows XP 64-bit.  We are all using TCS3, with FM10.
We developed our desired DITA templates (task, topic, concept, etc.), updated our EDD and edited our structapps file and everything was working perfectly on the XP 32-bit and XP 64-bit systems.  Our fourth colleague joined us, was given the Win 7 32-bit, and tried to set up our templates to use.  They all worked fine, except for the Task template - which will not open a new file, nor allow her to open any existing Task .xml or .fm files.
Then, for other reasons, my OS was switched from XP 64-bit to Win 7 32-bit, and I had to set up the templates again after loading TCS 3 on.  Now, all of the templates are working perfectly, except for Topic. If I choose DITA>New DITA file>New Topic and choose the template, it starts to open the file window and then just shuts down again, no error message, no file, no nothing.  If I try to open an existing topic.xml file I get this error message:
     XML Read Report Log
     November 15, 2012 10:14 am
     Source Document: R:\User_Manuals\baseline\...\Topic\12AJF070H4Y.xml
     XML Read Messages...
     Cannot open the template file ($STRUCTDIR\xml\DITA_1.2\app\technicalContent\template\TemplateMasterTopic.fm)
Which is exactly what happens when my colleague with 7 32-bit tries to open a task file.  Any ideas on what could be happening, that would make one file type unable to access a template, when all the others work exactly as they should be?
If I've missed including any information that would help clarify the situation, please let me know!

Answer 1

All very strange.
I'd start by testing the default apps. Hopefully, you have created new apps rather than modifying the default apps .. yes? If so, switch back to the default apps and see if you're getting the same behavior. If this is happening with the default, unmodified, apps, you'll know that it's a system issue of some kind .. if it on;y happens with your apps, then it's likely a problem with your apps.
In your second post, you say some things that I don't really understand ..
1) You said .. "If I click File>Open>select our task.template.fm.xml it opens with a TASK top level element." .. why do you have a file named "task.template.fm.xml"? Templates are typically FM binary files not XML files. Was this a typo or can you explain what this file is used for?
2) You said .. "If I click DITA>New DITA File>New Task>select out task.template.fm it asks if it can open in .xml, I say yes, it opens with a TASK top level element." .. If you select "New Task" (or any new DITA topic type), it's asking for a new file name. If you're selecting the file "task.template.fm", FM thinks that you want to name the new file with that name, but an XML file cannot have a ".fm" extension so it asks if it's OK to use ".xml" as the extension. This then creates a new file named "task.template.fm.xml" (perhaps that's how you got the file in my question #1). My question is .. why are you doing this? Selecting the template file will have no affect on things, and just ends up creating a file with an odd name in the app folder.
Let me know how the testing with the default apps goes, and with a bit more info we may be able to resolve your problems.
Cheers,
...scott