I have a template which I bought from template monster. Of course, as always with their templates, it is all show and no go, I get them just for the fonts, graphics, and sound effects mainly. I spent ~ 6 hours re-making it into a functioning site, removing their dead links and non-functioning components and adding in my own. I also spent a good deal of that time customizing colors, text, etc.

I test the file regularly... about every 15 to 30 minutes, by ctrl-enter publishing it. I finally realized how long it had been since I started working on the thing, and needing an extended break I went to save the fla. And flash froze on me. Before it saved... it just warned me the fla was going to be updated to the newer version of flash, if I want to keep the old version 'save as' blah blah blah, as always. And when I clicked 'save', it locked up.

I had to force quit the program after about 5 minutes of waiting and praying it would save; I rebooted, ran a virus and adware scan, everything was fine. I opened up the fla file, and of course there was nothing of my work. I checked the swf file, and it was the latest version I had test published. I tried to just save the unedited fla file that I got from the template, and of course it locked up again.

Another reboot, and I immediately kill all nonessential programs, load in a different fla file, it saves fine. Make some unneeded changes, it saved fine. changed it back to normal, it saved fine. load in the template, and it crashes again.

Despairing for my lost 6 hours of work, I search the web and come across swf decompiler by *******. I download it, install it, and decompile my swf file. And it seems to be the latest version, but all the naming conventions are screwed, the text is off in many places, and... guess what... after I spent an hour or two fixing all of that, the decompiled file locked up the machine when I tried to save it!

So it must be something in the component library, I am thinking, right? I go through and delete all nonessential elements, images I had or was going to replace, sounds I didn't need, etc. I try to save this stripped down version of the fla file, and still, no luck!!!

All my other fla files work normally, but this one, the original or the decompile of my heavily edited one, just lock up the program when I try to save or save as or save and compact. I can test the file and publish the file just fine, bu that does me no good unless I want to work on it for ~ 20 hours straight with no saves, and then never edit it again!!!

I contacted template monster and they suggested I download a new version of the template. So I sucked it up and tried, and it does the same thing! And they won't refund my money.

I now have about $50.00 and 10 hours of my time invested into an swf file (and a decompiled fla of that swf), and a base template, neither of which I can save!

Has anyone run into anything like this before? Any suggestions on how to fix it? Any other decompilers out there that may do a better job of accurately pulling the things (especially filters on my text layers, which are always dropped, and text size and sometimes font faces) out of the swf file to work with? And which might give me an fla file I can save?!?!?

I would appreciate any help out there!