An advanced problem with preloaders

Hi. I'm a little experienced with flash, but on occasion i've had a reoccuring problem and i'm trying to find an answer.

I took a premade preloader and altered it to my taste. I try to keep it simple and not use too many symbols or graphics. It has a loading bar and on the reccomendation of a friend I keep all the symbols shown on screen while the preloader is on, in a single movie clip.

But here is the problem. For some very very strange reason, it appears to load the contents of the movie before it loads the preloader!! So what happens is that the person is left with a white screen and then a few minutes later the background and play button suddenly appears and the movie is fully loaded!!

Is there any way I can force the movie to load a certain scene or part first so that I can force it to load the preloader before continuing with the rest of the movie? Please help me as i'm pulling my hair out over this thing which I feel really should be simple.

Being new to Flash myself, I've got two words for you:

Separate Preloader.

Do a search and you'll find some info. Any other preloader or preloading system is a waste of time. For me, anyway.

The separate preloader will create an empty movieclip into which your main movie is dumped. this new container hides your movie until it's done preloading. once finished, the container is then replaced by the main movie.

I probably haven't explained that right, but you get the gist. Separate preloaders are brilliant, and have solved all of my loading issues.

Hope that helps.