Begging your pardon DIIRE, I'd like to jump in with my 2 cents worth.

daysofoz, if you continue to have problems with Adobe Flash Player, you'll have to completely remove it by following the directions here:

How to uninstall the Adobe Flash Player plug-in and ActiveX control

Then reinstall it from scratch.

Thanks for the tips. Well, I uninstalled, and I must have done something right because I now see pictures where there used to be a red x....HOWEVER...now everytime I open up a website and want to look at anything, I keep getting this message saying "do you want to allow software such as Active X controls and plug ins to run?" with a yes or no button, well, I hit the yes, it opens up the photo, or whatever, but I get this prompt EVERY time I look at something! Needless to say, it gets a little tiring and frustrating always having to answer yes. How can I make that go away? I am on a decorating website and need to look at hundreds of photo ideas, and I just can't see myself having to answer that prompt every single time! Also, I had a security update prompt from Microsoft,
but they wouldn't download. When prompted further, I came to a Microsoft site that said the problem was I needed to update Service Pack 3. uhoh. I don't want to do that without some help from you guys and ladies at this website. I've done some reading on this site and there seem
to be lots of issues with Service pack 3. What should I do?

Click Tools > Internet Options > select Security tab > highlight Internet > Click Custom Level.

Scroll down to Active X controls and plug-ins > Make sure Run Active X controls and plug-ins is set to enabled > and also make sure Script ActiveX controls marked safe for scripting is enabled.