Maya 2011 not saving scenes/crashes

This started yesterday, I opened Maya 2011 and started to work - I went to save scene and Maya seemed to freeze.

I bkup my prefs to a different location - and deleted prefs,
still - the same behavior. I have to force logout each time it freezes - I have Maya 2013 and the same behavior started yesterday.

I googled it and could only find info saying delete prefs.

I should have come here in the first place, because I always get solutions.
thanks
dan