Flash & 64bit Internet Explorer dont play well together

I run on a 64 bit Vista machine. It has two versions of Internet Explorer installed, a 32 bit and 64 bit. When surfing the web I would notice that sometimes flash ads would display, other times they would not and I'd be prompted to install the flash player. So, I would. BUT... the player would never install.

After finally getting tired of it, I looked into the issue some more. Apparently I thought I was always running the 64 bit version of Internet Explorer, but alas, I was not.

In my task bar, I have an IE Icon that I click on sometimes, and other times I'll fire it up through the command prompt by entering "iexplore".

That was the problem. My Task Bar icon was set to open the 32 bit version of IE, while when I typed "iexplore" into the command window the 64 bit version would run. That would explain why I'm not seeing flash files on my 64 bit version. 64 Bit IE is not supported by flash. Bummer dude.

My fix:

I created a shortcut called "ie" in the system32 directory that fires up the 32 bit version (if I need flash support). Which I do when I'm watching episodes of DNRTV.