Adobe Flash Player

Uninstall Adobe Flash and see if Youtube plays.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/27/youtube-pushes-flash-to-the-back-burner-will-now-default-to-html5-player

Dunno about Windows XP, but I suspect older versions of Windows are having the same problems with the Adobe updates that older versions of the Mac OS are having, in that the default updater doesn't work.

You do need to update to the very latest version of Flash (which is probably where the update needs to be applied) because there are a number of very deadly attacks being exploited in the wild. To achieve that update, you might have to do some digging around on the Adobe web site. On my Mac, I discovered that if you follow the trail of links from the failed update to trouble shooting on the Adobe site, eventually you get to alternate ways to update, one of which will eventually work. I know, pain in the keister, but from what I hear, you need to get it to work somehow lest you find your entire computer and all the data on it compromised beyond usefulness. The bad guys are evidently having a field day.

Oh, yeah, and rumor has it that the malware has so far only been found in the wild for Windows. But of course, it's coming for Macs, too. EVERYBODY needs to attend to this one.

Uninstall Adobe Flash, then go to this link and download Flash and do a clean install and see what happens.

https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html

I had a similar problem with the last version of ADOBE FLASH. The newest one that recently came out did ok upgrading on my WIN 7 machine.

Roy Ken

I uninstalled Firefox, AVG, Adobe Flash Player and Yahoo Toolbar. I installed Panda anti virus and Firefox. Everything seems to be working so far. Now I am wondering if I should also get rid of Java. What do you think? Thanks for all the previous suggestions.

There has been what is known as a new (zero-day) exploit that attacks Adobe Flash Player. Distributed through the Angler Exploit Kit, the zero-day delivers malware that takes control of your computer to commit click fraud.

The Adobe update will not update older OS like XP.
Tat is why you are getting the messages but no update.

There is a free utility that will protect XP.
http://www.malwarebytes.org/antiexploit/?utm_source=engaged&utm_medium=email-internal-b2c&utm_campaign=EM-january2015newsletter&utm_content=mbae

That will take care of part of the problem.

Remove Java until you are on some site that complains that it needs it. You could install it then if you really need it. Most sites don't need it anymore. And Java is just as bad as Flash for security reasons. It could have unknown holes and vulnerabilities in it right now that just haven't been found yet. And even when they are; more could be found in the future. Java/Flash are antiquated software left over from the 1990's and are on their way out.

Is there anything besides Adobe Flash Player that can be used? I was on a couple of sites this AM that required Flash player to view. I tried to download Adobe and was unable to do so. Any ideas?

Google Chrome has some version or variation of it built into the browser.