Yes this can be a real pain. As far as I’m aware, once a ProAnimator project has crashed it is pretty much dead. As a beginner you need to start thinking about ways of working that ensure you have a backup. Things like turning on Auto-Save, doing Incremental backups etc. You can’t work for 4 days on a project without saving incremental versions of your project, if you do you are bound for trouble (as you have discovered) when the project file won’t open.
JD
John Dickinson
Motionworks
http://www.motionworks.com.au