Youtube videos do not play and gchat sounds do not work

Question

These problems are only in Firefox.  Allow me to elaborate.
I have a Windows 7 64-bit laptop, Firefox 13.0 and the latest Adobe Flash Player installed.  What's strange is that I think the videos worked fine two or three days ago, but now the videos don't work.  I thought this was a minor glitch, then I noticed that I wasn't getting chat notification sounds on gchat in Firefox.  So I went in the settings and it said that sounds were linked to Flash player.  I looked up Flash player and installed the latest one, still no change.  I then uninstalled flash player and reinstalled.  Still, no dice.
The youtube video problem is rather strange; I've never seen it before.  The black box appears, and below it are the normal volume controls, video controls, play, etc.  Inside the black box is the play button, with the white triangle in a red box pointing to the right.  Like I said, I've never seen this before, so I decided to click it since my videos weren't playing.  I click it, and all I get is "An error occurred.  Please try again later".  I do the normal clear cache/cookies, restart browser, still no dice.
Everything works fine in google chrome.  It's just firefox that's giving me these problems.  If anyone has suggestions, please let me know!
Thanks in advance.
Edit: oh, and on the adobe page where you can test to see if your adobe flash player is working, all I get is blank spaces where the video or animation is supposed to be.  Facebook sounds seem to work too.  But in Tetris battle, I get "Errors on Loading File: Facebookmainframe.swf. Retry..."

Answer 1

I too have the same issue with Firefox and flash videos.  I haven't tried to use other browser yet, but I will when I finish this.  I first saw this yesterday with Firefox 12.0; same issue with FF 13.0 now.  No video anywhere will play, from YouTube to TMZ!  I either get an error "error occurred try again later", or the area on the page where the video should be is blank.  I have uninstalled and reinstalled all Adobe items several times.  Control Panel says they are installed and Flash Manager in CP is OK, but when I go ONLINE to verify or check version, the page is blank.  Likewise is the Online Flash Settings Manager.  I have tried flushing FF cache, cookies, reset and Safe Mode - all yields zip!  It all worked Ok last week.  This is just starting either today or last day or so.  The ONLY possible cause that I can find is that Windows published about 25 "security" and "NET Framework" updates on June 12, 13, and 14.  I suspect the cause might lie there.  Last time I check with forums over 500 people were looking for solution to this issue and that number is just in last 24 and it's steadily climbing.  I think this is pretty pandemic for Firefox and Flash whatever the cause.  If it isn't fixed it will KILL Firefox (maybe that's somebody's goal? - I can see Microsoft/Windows doing something like that to remove competition with their IE browser!).
I tried to talk to Adobe Tech about it, but got stone walled.  I posted on Firefox forum, but got nothing back that was useful.  Like most I am running Win 7 HP x64.  I am also using Norton 360 and have set the Firewall there to FULL ALLOW for all Adobe and even tried turning it OFF for a while with no luck.
At this point, I am fully lost.  I have flushed, deleted, reinstalled, updated, disabled, verified, tested, safe moded and God knows what else all without any luck.  I guess I am going to start using Chrome;  I really hate IE9. (Sorry, Microsoft, suck a big one ) .  I am @OldeGreyWoolf on Twitter; if you find a solution, please drop me a tweet!  I'll do the same!  By tomorrow, I figure there will be thousands of users in this same box.  Maybe then someone, some where will come up with a solution!  Feel free to copy and paste this post any where/every where.
Bob Woolf, aka the OldeGreyWoolf