Somehow, swfdec plugins managed to get installed, and they were
clashing ... uninstalled them (again)

If I could fix this problem Windows XP would for the most part keep the
Maytag repairman company.

I have not upgraded to 9.1 yet because of all of the problems I have seen on
this list.

are you kidding? 9.04 was a disaster, absolutely unusable for
anyone with intel graphics, and for a lot of folks with ATI graphics as
well. Many performance issues with 9.04 and sqlite too.

As to your worries over the problems people have posted here - let's
just say there are people who are going to have problems no matter what.
You're missing all the reports about 9.10 from people that say "it
works" - so let me weigh in and say that 9.10 fixed all the issues I had
with 9.04. if you've got a 32 bit system 9.10 is a win - I've heard
there is some tweaking needed for 64 bit desktop apps, but that's a given.

Type about:plugins into your address bar and see what flash version you have.
In my experience this is usually what causes the problem.