anyone else experienced this bug? after beating the catacomb levels under "starter town", i used a pair of nested chests(the 600 weight one's that magically become 0 weight when left open) to collect various weapons and armor to sell. but when i got to town, i dragged and dropped the chest within a chest on the ground and... POOF! they disappeared! thousands of ingame gold pieces worth of stuff disappeared just like that. i didn't reload as it didn't contain anything i wanted to keep, and the last game was before i spent half an hour clearing lots and lots of skeletons.

is there any way to fix this problem or should i just avoid doing this(putting a container within a container)?

You may be able to see the chest at night or from a distance, clcick on it, and get the contents out even if it disappears when you get close.

In general putting containers within containers is ok, but the chests with zero weight when open seem more likely to have issues. I'd stick to just carrying around one container (sacks of grain weight 100, and if you join the thieves guild in Verdistis you can find a container that weighs 5, IIRC).

weight bug and disappearing chests

There is a small chest that only weighs 200, as well. I don't recall where I got them, but I ended up with half a dozen. Lanilor has a 300 weight elven cupboard. There should be enough chests around to avoid using barrels or vases for storage, which can break if you click on them in combat mode.