I have a very old (pre 2006) HP laptop. I'm running XP Home and still running Service Pack 2 because Service Pack 3 via automatic updates failed. I have had difficulty updating (took me a system repair to install IE8) and I don't want to go through the very complex (to me) steps to install Service Pack 3 when I'm not using this machine for much. All I use this computer for is to surf the internet and play simple games (like Jewel Quest and Fishdom). I play simple games online (thru the Ask toolbar) and recently bought a CD containing four Jewel Quest games - which I've installed. Three of the four games work (slowly) and one doesn't work at all. I finally got sick of messing around with a slow and freezing computer and did some research. I found recommendations (among others) to update the adobe flash player and adobe shockwave. Since my Adobe Reader updates and Java updates have worked WITHOUT problems, I decided to do these updates, sttarting with the Flash Player.
The Flash Player unistall went off without a hitch but the Flash Player install failed and only gave me the message "installation failed". I believe it failed because my system can't support the new flash update (I have an old celeron chip). Adobe archives "old" versions of Flash, which I downloaded. But they are "zip" files and I can't figure out how to open and run them. I'm working on that, but am just wondering if somewhere I can get a good, clean copy of Flash Player 9 to download and install without my going through hours of research and work.
I know I made a mistake uninstalling before verifying that my machine would support the new Flash Player, and have learned a painful lesson. I would appreciate any help as my game playing days are over on this machine without the Flash Player.