Flash player stopped working in Win8.1, IE11. Also, listed publisher is "not available"

Question

I can't get any videos to play on FaceBook or any other site. It tells me to install Flash player, but It's already installed and it has worked fine before. I've gone into "manage add-ons" and it is enabled. Also, ActiveX filtering is not enabled. Those were the only 2 troubleshooting steps I could find. I can't seem to uninstall the player, and when I try to re-install it I'm told it's already part of Windows 8.1.
Under "manage add-ons" I copied some information:
Name:              
Shockwave Flash Object
Publisher:         
Not Available
Type:              
ActiveX Control
Architecture:      
32-bit and 64-bit
Version:           
Not available
File date:         
Friday, August 1, 2014, 8:17 PM
Date last accessed:
Today, August 19, 2014, 2 minutes ago
Class ID:          
{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000}
Use count:         
83202
Block count:       
57
File:              
Flash.ocx
Folder:            
C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash
I think it's a little suspect that the Publisher and Version are "Not available". Can anyone tell me how I can get this un-installed then re-installed?
Thanks!
-Eric

Answer 1

Hi MtnManiacX
The publisher should not be listed as 'Not Available', it should look similar to the following, listing the publisher and version:
You said in your first post "but It's already installed and it has worked fine before".  Did you install any Internet Explorer updates recently, and if so, what is the KB number for them?  You can view installed updates in the Control Panel > Windows Update > View update history and look for the Internet Explorer updates. If there are recent updates installed, you may want to uninstall the update and try re-installing again.  As Jeromie says, Microsoft updates Flash Player in Internet Explorer on Windows 8.x and above.  This could be a failed update install, or something else.
Maria