Large course - constant crashing - Presenter 9 - help!

Hi all!

Last January I was tasked to create a ~100 slide point-and-click course (let's not debate the Instructional Efficacy of this right now) and it worked fine. Even with audio on every slide, it worked just fine.

Recently, I've had to update the same course and while not much has changed (I even lost 3 slides), it will not work in Presenter 9. Everytime I try to do ANYTHING, such as Import Audio, or Sync Animations, either PPT or Articulate freezes. I'm not sure WHY but after 2 days of this, plus losing countless files at this point, I'm rather frustrated.

Caveat: Due to limitations of our internal LMS, as well as Client Wishes (ugh), I cannot break this up into several different modules, no matter how much I would like to for a myriad of reasons. I need to make it work as one large file.

Before you suggest it's my computer, I've now tried it on three different machines, one more powerful than the other, and I'm left to conclude it's the file or the software.

Suggestions?   Many thanks!