Weird Flash Video Problem

For the last few weeks I've noticed that Flash Video wasn't working on most of the sites I visited in ie7. Instead of showing the video the site would show a message saying that I needed to upgrade my Flash Player to see the video. I tried upgrading the player multiple times and the installation always said it was successful but I'd still get the "please upgrade your flash player" message when I tried to view Flash Videos on new sites. What seemed even more strange was the fact that normal (non-video) Flash animations seemed to work fine.

After doing some searching, I finally found a post by someone having similar problems to me with a solution. To solve the issue you need to browse to the C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash folder on your computer and run the executable files FlashUtil9d.exe and NPSWF32_FlashUtil.exe. I gave this suggestion a try and sure enough it fixed my issue. I can now watch Flash Video again though I have no idea why.