Bridge stops responding to Wacom pen clicks in Windows 8

Question

When I use Adobe Bridge with the Wacom pen (Intuos 5) the first one or two clicks work but then the program stops responding to any pen clicks until I move the mouse or touch the touchpad, and then all the unresponsive clicks are played back at once. This problem first appeared with Bridge in CS5. I then upgraded to CS6 hoping it would go away, but it didn't. And now I've downloaded the new CC version of Bridge and it does the same thing. The pen works erratically in other Adobe programs as well but the malfunction is most obvious and happens consistently in Bridge. All Microsoft programs (Office 2010, Outlook, Internet Explorer, and Windows 8 itself) work fine with the Wacom pen.
I've searched the Adobe and Wacom support forums and this problem does not appear to be affecting anyone else; although, I did find these two posts by people with similar problems:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/5359741
http://forums.adobe.com/message/5262754
I've talked to Wacom tech support and tried all of the troubleshooting steps they could think of, including going back to earlier versions of the Intuos driver. They released a new Windows 8 driver yesterday (6.36) but it did not solve my problem.
Since I use a Logitech mouse, I've tried updating, going back to earlier versions, and completely uninstalling the Logitech drivers but the problem did not go away. I've also uninstalled, cleaned settings, and reinstalled the Adobe apps several times with no change.
This morning I tried disabling all non-Microsoft services and all non-essential startup programs on reboot but it made no difference.
One clue I've noticed that might help Adobe engineers figure this mystery out is that when I click on the little triangles to expand the metadata in the panel (with my first pen click as that's the only one which registers) they will highlight but not rotate and the panel never expands (see pictures below). This is a unique behavior which I can not replicate with my mouse. If someone can identify what would make the triangles respond in this way we might be onto what message the program is getting when I click with the pen.
After pen click on Camera Raw metadata triangle
After mouse click on Camera Raw metadata triangle

Answer 1

Curt Y wrote:
Shut down all unnecessary programs running in the background.  Does Win 8 still use the ctrl alt delete for the Task Manager?
I did as you suggested and tried shutting down other running programs with Task Manager (Ctrl-Shift-Tab in Windows 8) but nothing changed in Bridge's response to pen clicks.
Then I used msconfig to turn off all non-essential system services and programs by doing what it calls a "Diagnostic Startup". Upon reboot only the minumal Windows drivers and services were running. Not even the Wacom driver was loaded, although the pen still worked using the Microsoft pen driver. I oppened Bridge, and guess what, exact same problem. One click and then the program locks up. And this is with absolutely nothing else running, no sound, no network, no other programs, and only the minimal set of Microsoft drivers.
So I figure that the only thing that's left for me to investigate is the Microsoft "Pen and Touch" settings in Control Panel. I open that and see three pen actions: Single-tap, Double-tap and a thing called "Press and hold" which is turned off. I turn it on and test Bridge. Bingo! it works. Pen clicks now register normally.
If I hold the pen down for a second, however, a right click is triggered. This is what "Press and hold" is supposed to do. But if I go back to Control Panel and turn "Press and hold" off, then Bridge locks up on normal pen clicks. It's like Bridge is interpreting every click as a click-and-hold but is unable to follow thorugh if the setting is turned off in the "Pen and Touch" control panel.
I've found no other program on my computer that does this but Bridge, and all version of Bridge from CS5 through CC do the exact same thing. A very strange bug indeed! But now I have a solution: turn on "Press and hold" in the "Pen and Touch" applet in Windows 8 Control Panel.