I am running 2004 and have installed a shareware version conversion utility someone on this site recommended awhile back. I would be willing to try to open it if you'll post it. You may also look into the autosave settings and paths in your Autocad > Tools > Options. You can force autocad to make automatic backups in a specific directory and I think you can customize the naming conventions it uses as well.
My recent acad woes: I lost 3 hours worth of work one morning because autocad "errored out" in the middle of an autosave and corrupted the working file and the backup. That is when I tweaked my autosave settings and it has already saved my butt one other time.
This version of Autocad has been a little finicky. When it dies, it vanishes instantly. Nothing in the task manager. It's just gone in a millisecond. It has happened about five times in about 2 months. Usually the problems have been related to inserting blocks. At one point, I had a particular block that would cause the glitch 3 out of 4 times when I would insert it. I deemed it "corrupted" and blew it away. I re-created that simple block, a symbol for a photo-cell I think it was. The replacement was exactly the same as far as I can tell, but has been no problem at all...
Also, I have had Autocad 2004 fail to start three times since I installed it about 2 months ago. When that happens it reports a "missing *.dll file". Each time that happens, I have to reinstall (repair the installation) using the original CD. I almost wonder if that is a back-handed security feature...
Now I find myself hitting CTRL+S every time there is a break in the action when I am drawing in autocad...