Flash doesn't display the stage, go figure

[cyberbmb]

My brother came down for the weekend, and when he tried to open up a .fla file in Flash 5, you could see the Timeline and all the frames, but as the playhead moved, nothing ever appeared where the graphics on the stage should be. Just a big grey space. It was very weird indeed. I let him install my Mac Flash 5 disc, after he trashed his version and his preferences, but the same thing happened. He does not have the 5.0a updater, but I am not sure if that would fix it. Can anyone offer any ideas/suggestions to this problem? Thanks.

[rockmeister]

Without knowing any better maybe it is low on memory, try increasing flash's partition. If that doesn't work try trashing every part of flash especially the preferences and reinstall. Flash is always going tits up on me but a restart usually sorts it. Sorry but I don't have any better ideas.

[aldorr]

hey dude, i've had this before.
if you just copy all the frames from the one flash file and paste them into a new one then it should work again.
a couple of notes:
select all the layers by shift clicking.
all the layers must have the same amount of frames.
the layer names will disappear on copying.
(and perhaps the version of flash that your bro has is not the kleanest)
good luck.
-aldorr.