TSGL: Flash in IE 6 or 7

[GalTrouble]

Hi,

I have a fairly new Acer Aspire 5100 laptop (November 06).  Running Windows 
XP Media Center Edition Version 2002 with SP2 and all other CU's and 
recommended updates done (including  IE7).

My problem ... when I got the laptop, I found I could not get to websites 
that required Java or Flash.  At first, I couldn't pinpoint the problem, but 
then finally got Java to install.  It was always telling me I needed to 
restart for Java to work (weeks, before it finally took).  But, I still can 
not get Flash to work in IE.  I had IE6 ... and was getting frustrated, so I 
finally installed FireFox.  That works fine.  NBC.com, YouTube, CNN, etc ... 
But, if I used IE6, it would tell me ..  Hello, you either have JavaScript 
turned off or an old version of Macromedia's Flash Player.  I would download 
the flash, and install, and it tells me it is there, but ... still .. can't 
view pages.  Java is enabled, and it is the most recent version. I then 
upgraded to IE7 ... in hopes that it would fix my problem.  It did not.  I 
still have the same error.  But, all the same sites work fine in FireFox.  I 
have since made FireFox my default browser, but I do prefer to use IE, since 
that is what I use at work.

Any suggestions?

Deb