Ok...obviously this is an OLD thread, however since I just ran into this myself with my Maya 2015 version (running on a home-built AMD based machine with Windows 7), I wanted to post what I found out and how I fixed it....in case someone else ever runs into the same problem.

In short, I was having the EXACT same problem...file would open and save so long as you didn't make ANY changes, however the moment you moved a character control or even so much as deleted a single keyframe....BAM...Maya crashed on trying to save. When I'd try to re-open the file, it would come up with a little of the geometry and all the textures were just gone (obviously the file had gotten corrupted during the save). However I noticed in Windows Explorer that there were a couple of files with odd extensions; .maa06852, maa05508, etc....files that could NOT be seen in the Maya file browser without checking "All Files". When I opened these, the scene would open, in tact, BUT...without the changes that had been made before the crash. The moment I'd try to change something and save, it would crash again.

In my case, I tried all the usual...deleted the preferences file, reinstalled my video drivers, etc...nadda. Since I have not upgraded hardware or OS in roughly two years and since everything had been working correctly up to this point, I was pretty certain it was NOT a "system-related" error. Unlike the OP here, what I finally did to fix the problem was export the character with the animation to it's OWN file, then after checking to make sure that worked, export the rest of the "set" (scene) to it's own file (without the character....only the camera animation and other objects in the scene), then re-integrate...no more crashes (so far). And it saved me from having to re-animate everything as the OP there ended up doing.

Please note that simply exporting the WHOLE scene did NOT work...when I tried that, as with the save, Maya crashed (Windows error - "STOPPED WORKING"). It ONLY worked when I exported everything in pieces, then re-assembled everything.

Still not sure what caused that glitch...again everything HAD been working smoothly...and again I know this is a VERY old thread, but since it just happened to me, hopefully if someone else runs into this problem again, this will save them some frustrations.