time dependent data not read during simulation

I have completed a model with time dependent material data (conductivity) and a remote coworker is having problems running the model on her machine.  It appears the data is not read during the actual simulation, and FEFLOW is instead reading the data that is not time-dependent (Non time-dependent data was set to '999').  However she is able to see the TLIST data existing in the problem editor.

The data is stored in the fem file, not a separate binary file.

Is there a setting selection she needs to make somewhere on her machine in order to read the time dependent data?

The coworker was running 5.4 when the data was not being read.  She tried on another machine with 5.3, and was prompted to enter a location for time dependent material data (This seems to be the norm even if data is stored in the .fem file).  I instructed her to point the location to a dummy .pow file.  After she did this the simulation ran correctly in 5.3. 

This sounds like a bug in 5.4 where time dependent material data stored in the .fem file from the older 5.3 version is being read in the viewer but not during the simulation execution.

FEFLOW tech support felt this problem might be due to not having write permission on a specific drive where the data is being stored.  I have not been able to confirm this and I am not using 5.4 to reproduce error.