Adobe pop up making me NUTS!!!!!

I had to change from XP to Windows 7. Easy enough but old hard drive died. I backed up all the information to an external hard drive then used Microsoft's Easy Transfer to move information from old PC to new hard drive. I installed Windows 7 32 bit on new ( used) hard drive and installed MS Office and other programs. I updated IE to most current version and added Firefox. I am running McAfee for security.

All seemed to be well when last Wednesday ( 7/23) I started to get the following message every time I tried to use IE. The message is " A website wants to open web content using this program on your computer. This program will open outside of protected mode. IE's Protected Mode helps protect your computer. Name: Adobe Flashruntime
Publisher Adobe Systems Inc
ALLOW DONT ALLOW

Every time I try to DONT allow or close this window, I get all kinds of ad popping up or the PC slows down to the point I can hardly get anything done.

What is going on? I seem to have better luck with Firefox but the above message started to appear on Firefox also. Virus????

Please offer ANYTHING TO make this STOP!!!!

Cheffy D
Illinois