Total War: Shogun 2 crashing reported by users

Users have started reporting that Total War: Shogun 2 is not only crashing on their systems, but is affecting their Adobe Flash player as well. The issue seems to be most frequent with ATI RADEON graphic card users.

Unfortunately, none of the users' attempts to remedy the situation have worked, including updating and using all of the available drivers for their card, playing the game in DX9 instead of DX11, updating audio drivers and Windows, uninstalling and reinstalling Flash, and reinstalling the game itself.