Yeah, I don't know WTF is going on, considering I am a professional web
programmer you'd think I could figure it out, but I haven't got the time for
this s....

I installed a bunch of MS patches and now IE wont load any flash stuff, or let
me install the new flash player, and it seems all activeX stuff is f.cked

I have gone through all the security settings in IE to prompt when before
running or installed ANY (unsigned, signed etc) code, but nothing.

I dont really give a flying f... about watching flash anims, but I would like
my f..king HP scanner to work (jesus knows why they write scanner software that
uses IE????)

I am officially donning my 'stupid user' hat on this one, because I just dont
see why I should have to pick through the g.d damned mess.

answer to my problem appears to be;
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/10/11/479796.aspx

related to
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896688

have to uninstall it to get activex back.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909889/

Was just browsing this tiopic as I have had same problem for at least a month.
I found that somehow I had disabled Shcockwave as an add-on program to run the
install. Once I fixed that, all has gone well. I noticed that issue when my
lower toolbar had an icon of an exclamation point over a wheel that i'd never
noticed before.