All media players and Chrome shockwave plugin not working

[Psycho Savager]

Today everything went haywire on my computer. I can't watch any videos online (YouTube, Facebook) and none of my media players (VLC, Window Media Player) are working either. Certain websites keep displaying the "Shockwave Plugin not working" message but Chrome is up-to-date. Edge is having the same problems

What could be affecting both my browsers and my media players?

 

[Colif]

did you restart PC since?

it sounds like flash is playing up except chrome uses its own version of flash, and I am not sure if edge uses it at all.

http://www.howtogeek.com/103292/how-to-fix-shockwave-flash-crashes-in-google-chrome/

 

[Psycho Savager]

Sorry to bump this, but I'm having the exact same problem again. I want to know why it keeps happening and what I can do to fix it for good.