Application asleep

If you're using Safari, go to the Help menu, then Installed Plug-ins. There should be a box (probably at the bottom) titled 'Shockwave Flash'. Inside the box there should be a plugin with MIME type 'application/x-shockwave-flash', Description 'Shockwave Flash', Extensions 'swf'. Is it there? If so, what version is it?
This plugin should be located on your hard drive at /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Shockwave Flash NP-PPC (or possibly in your user's library folder). Is that there? If not, then it's not installed succesfully. Maybe you were using the wrong installer. If it is there, and it's not working, it may be an old version. The current version is 7.

Hope this helps. 🙂

Sorry I didn't realise you were using Mac OS 9. If you post in the future, it helps to put this information in your original post.

I'm not sure if you need version 7, but it's the newest. I think the default version in OS 9 is version 4, which probably won't play a lot of files. Try copying the plug-in from the Netscape plug-ins folder to the IE plug-ins folder (Internet Explorer 5/Plug-ins if you have IE 5). If this doesn't work, you can get version 7 for Mac OS 9 here. After it's installed, it should be in the plug-ins folder inside the IE folder. If it's only in the Netscape plug-ins folder, copy it to the IE plug-ins folder. Make sure you don't leave old versions in either plug-ins folder though.