Constant Reconnection of files in dynamic link

so I have an old project in PPro that uses about 15 ae comps on a dynamic link. i had stored it on a drive but some elements came from other drives. 8 months later I open the project and everything looks fine including all of the missing parts of my comps. 
I opened ae using Edit Original command and spent about 35mins reconnecting files. I reconnected everything and saved it. I closed AE and went back to PPro and rendered the work area. It played back with everything, so I closed PPro. 
The next day I open the PPRO project and 3 AE comps were missing. I went to edit original and opened the same ae project and reconnected (Save). Back in premiere pro, MISSING ae files, different files at that. 

Back to AE via edit original. This time I collect all files after replacing the missing ones saved the fully working collected ae project to a new name. (I did save to the old name before collecting. )
Back in Premiere missing files. So I replace the AE comp on the PPro seq. with the same file from the collected project and guess what... The new file came in with missing files. 

Not usual and has never happened before. What am I not understanding about this?

Note:
the original AE project had (converted) behind its name but I am sure that is due to a software update. I would not think that to be the culprit.