Timer works only with CCS debugger

Hi,

I have a very simple program,

which writes a message to oled,

and then start "Timer A" to blink the internal led.

The program looks to work fine when I execute it from CCS using "Debug".

(Code Composer Studio, Version: 6.1.1.00022)

But when I just connect it to USB for power,

or hit the "reset" button,

the program executes the code before the timer,

but the timer interrupt is not working.

The code for timer was taken from here (2nd example: "Using the Timer")

http://www.crash-bang.com/getting-started-msp430-timers-3/

I suspect it is something with the settings of timer, not with CCS,

but I dont know what can cause this problem.

Thanks for any help.