It's the strangest thing. I've always made the changes to the HTML template, and then shut down the PC later on without closing HFS. I could have swarn I had closed HFS and reopened it on at least one of those occasions, but I guess I didn't. I just assumed by shutting down the PC HFS would close as it normally would. After your suggestion I closed the program and reopened it seperate from the bootup / shut down process. It then finally saved my changes. I still wonder why that is, but since it's working now I can't complain.
Thanks for the tip!
P.S. -- I use HFS not only for the uses it was intended for, but also as a program to use along side the MVPS hosts file (
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm). I set the template to load a blank white page instead of the regular 404 errors when a file path is not found. Now web page add banners show up as blank white banners, which is much nicer than the usual errors you usually have to see IE show when you are using the MVPS hosts file.