CS3 installs, but freezes when I attempt to load it (no splash screen... just loads forever)

Question

I have been able to successfully INSTALL Adobe Photoshop CS3: Extended multiple times, however I have yet to actually successfully RUN the application. After installation, when I try to open the program, a window appears with "Adobe Photoshop CS3" at the top and it is simply a large grey box with nothing inside of it. My mouse cursor turns into an hourglass and that's it... I left it there for an hour and a half once just to see what it would do and it simply continued in an endless loop of nothingness.
I have a custom-built computer with an AMD Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition, 2x2GB of OCZ 1066mhz Reaper DDR2, a Gigabyte motherboard with the GX790 chipset (SB750 southbridge), and a 2x1 Terabyte RAID 1 array.
It's running in a brand spanking new Windows XP Professional installation with Service Pack 3.
I have tried the following:
1) Uninstalling and reinstalling (same result)
2) Uninstalling all Adobe programs, Running Adobe Clean Script at level 4, running Windows Install Cleanup to remove any remaining Adobe remnants, and reinstalled. (same result)
3) Doing everything in step 2 again, then copying the CD to my hard drive, and installing from my hard drive. (same result)
4) Doing everything in step 2 again, then making a new administrative user account and reinstalling (same result...)
The adobe tech support guys I encountered came up with some pretty crazy (and flat stupid) explanations for my problems.
One guy claimed that my Serial was for CS1 and that somehow I'd gotten a CS1 disk that just happened to come in a CS3 box, with a CS3 disk label, which just happens to say "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended" after you install it... Yeah... Right.
Another said I should reformat... Yeah right. I JUST installed XP Professional. Terrible advice.
Another said that he had tried everything and that it simply wouldn't run on my computer... and that was that (as if I should be satisfied that a program I just spent many $100s on simply refuses to work and there is nothing I can do about it).
Yet another guy (after I finally got shipped off to Indian technical support...) said that he'd seen this problem many times before and that it's linked to an instruction code error related to AMD Phenom processors and that there should be a patch out soon for it. However, I looked up threads where people with Phenom 9850 CPUs (My CPU!) claim to be running the software flawlessly.
Can anyone give me any hope here? I'm about to call Adobe again and attempt to get some kind of intelligent answer to my problem, but in the mean time I was hoping against hope that someone else out there has had this problem and managed to solve it.
Thank you for your help

Answer 1

Hi Everyone,
Problem Solved Yeah!!!
~~~~ Problem: Adobe CS3 Master Collection Installs, but the applications don't run, but are running in a process, or displays and hangs and does not allow for Activation. ~~~~
This has been an issue for me with my dual Quad Core Xeon system for over a year. I believe that it has to do with RAID configurations and an improper pointer to the operating system for activation. I am using Vista 32 with SP1. The majority of Adobe support took me through literally weeks of pain. Unfortunately, I did not talk to Sarah!!!!
The above works and is posted again below!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1) Go to administrative tools within the control panel and go to Services. Within Services find FLEXnet Licensing Service and start it, if it is not already started.
2) Go here:
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb401528
Install the patch (I know it says it's for Reader and for Vista only but this is false. It works for many apps within the Adobe suite and is compatible with XP). If you press CTRL+ALT+DEL and go to the Processes tab you should see that FNPLicensingService.exe is now running.
3) Start up any application other than Adobe Acrobat. You should be prompted with an activation screen. Enter your serial and activate the package online. CS3 should now be functinal.
THANK YOU AGAIN "SARAH AT ADOBE" FOR ACTUALLY CARING AND YOUR KNOWLEDGE THAT GAVE YOU THE ABILITY TO ACTUALLY HELP. I WISH I COULD THANK YOU PERSONALLY. I HAVE SPENT LITERALLY OVER 90 HOURS WITH OVER 15 CALLS TO ADOBE WITH NO RESULTS.