I use Chrome's built-in Flash player, seems to solve that particular issue. I only remember when I've got Firefox open sometimes and it whinges about Flash not being installed for some pages.

Like you say, it's the opt-out toolbars and AV that I really fucking hate.

Yeah, that was another thing that hurt when I realised that  it was downloading additional crap because I hadn't opted out. So I had to cancel and start the download over again.