.fla won't advance past frame 2; used to work fine!

i have a .fla that was working absolutely flawlessly. i was running usability tests (from the html output) and everything. then i started working on another iteration, published, and suddenly, my main animation would only advance to frame 2 when i tested from the html file. i found out that when i pulled the audio layer out and published again, it works. put the audio back (sync: streaming; repeat: 1) and it stops at the 2nd frame again.

all that said, the quicktime file still works. how is this possible?

environment: working in flash 8 but publishing for flash 5.
other conditions: not using scenes; using loadMovie

thank you for ANY advice - this is driving me crazy…