Flash player problems

I recently tried to update flash player through the http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ site. However in doing such, the installer continually froze (non-responsive) during the "retreiving install" step. I was forced to reboot my computer after each time this occured. I then went through the install_flash_player.exe file that was available through the Adobe site. While this allowed me to install flash player, it is now crashing almost constantly, when on most sites containing flash, to the point it's almost unusable. Please help!!! I am using Windows 8 64-bit and Firefox for browsing.