Adobe Flash Player doesnt work

something happened and now Safari and Firefox wont allow adobe flash player to show slide shows - all i get is a black screen - no indication of any errors; I uninstalled Safari and Flash player and reinstalled them to no avail. I think it may be related to something that happened to my system preferences - the accounts, log in items had for some reason changed to just three items: growl helper app; growl menu; and logitech control center. I didnt change these; on my laptop - which still works and allows flash player to work - there are these additional login items microsoft au daemon, expander daemon; itunes helper - when I search my desktop of the daemon files nothing shows up. Please help. (I also cant play videos in my browsers)