Record is Unavailable error opening attachments in Notes - Dynamics CRM

Today I encountered a problem in a Dynamics CRM 2013 environment, the resolution for which reminded me that sometimes a good old fashioned browser cache empty isn't such a lame idea. (TL;DR Empty your browser cache if you get this error)

We have a system where we generate a file, save it as an attachment to a Note against a particular entity. The Note is owned by the user who initiated this action. In our case, every time the user clicked on the file they would see the following error:

Record is Unavailable

The requested record was not found or you do not have sufficient permissions to view it

This error opened up in a new tab in Internet Explorer, and it happened pretty quickly (i.e. it was hard to see if a request was being made to the server at all). I couldn't find any errors being logged on the server side. The Note (and therefore the file attached to it) was created by the user, so I couldn't see any reason permissions were a part of the problem.

As a workaround, I performed an Advanced Find and found the notes. From the results there I could open the file and download it. This ruled out permissions as a problem, and indicated some kind of problem with the entity form perhaps? The error was occurring across multiple records, all of which I could open if I went via the Advanced Find route.

I tried logging into the CRM with an Internet Explorer InPrivate browsing session, and lo and behold the files downloaded when the user clicked on the link - same form, same user.

That made me think there was some browser issue at play - I didn't have another browser available to verify. In the end, I emptied the browser cache and reloaded CRM. The problem was now fixed and I could download the files.

To me it looked like some element of the form / common JavaScript for that entity was corrupted in the browser cache. As I said at the start - sometimes good old fashioned techniques are still relevant in 2016.