InDesign CS4 Package/Collect for Output - Missing links problem

I posted this on the PC forum by mistake so I apologise for doubling up on the message for those who have found the same message twice. As far as I know this is a Mac only problem!
Having recently freelanced in 3 design studios since the CS4 release, the Collect for Output problem within InDesign seems to be widespread. I've seen this happen on a range of machines from a G5's to laptops. All have been running the latest version of Leopard.
For some unknown reason any document created in older versions of Indesign that is opened in IndDesign CS4 does not collect all the linked files when it's packaged. All preflight checks are fine, the new live preflight feature shows green light, I even tried re linking all files to a new source folder containing all links and it still only randomly collects one third of the needed linked files with no obvious pattern emerging between the files omitted, i.e clipping paths, colour profiles, file types.
The worst thing is that it happens randomly on documents created fresh in InDesign CS4 as well so I'm having trouble trying to pinpoint where the problem stems from.
This is driving people crazy, and I can see that it's going to be a major pain for numerous design agencies. I hope Adobe sorts this out quick or it's back to CS3 for most of us who charge for our time. I guess I can always send Adobe the bill for the time spent manually collecting all files for a job!!
Please no obvious suggestions on preflight settings as it's happening to people with twenty plus experience in the business.
Thanks for reading the post.

Hi JAD the mad,
we have the same problem on our machines here at work regarding the randomness of the Indesign CS4 package function collecting links.
The office has recently upgraded to all new Power Mac G5's with Mac OS X Version 10.5.6. 2x2.8Ghz 4GB RAM, a new server and all new Adobe CS4 packages.
Another user on the forum also has the same problem he said:
nguyen khanh duy - 7:40am Nov 23, 08 PST (#31 of 67)
I have a problems with my document created with Adobe Indesign CS4.
I can not package the file with its links into a folder. Sometimes a few files are collected, but when I convert all the images into CMYK color space, none of them were collected.
My documents contains 70 links and 140 pages.
So when I need to collect links, I convert the document into CS3 INX file and use Indesign CS3 to collect the links.
I've tried with other document with hundreds of links and all or them are 100 pages. All the links were collected. (offcourse with CS4)
Please help me. Thank you very much
As for our specific problem,
We have files which do not package all the links properly. Indesign only packages a random amount of the links into the new folder. There seems to be no consistency with regard to file type, size, colour profile or location. The pre-flight shows a green light and this error seems to occur randomly. It is very annoying if we are working on the local hard drive and have links there and on the server and then want to package everything to upload to the server or to work on another computer. We have to find all the links and copy them individually to a new folder.
Saving as with a new file name does not help. Also copying all links to a new folder from the links pallet does not copy all the links. The error is disconcerting due to it's seemingly random occurrence. We have tried all the simple solutions and it seems very much like a bug in the software.
Does anyone else share this problem? It would be great to hear any suggestions or similar stories.
Regards
Steve

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