Photoshop CS 4 Help Requested. Can not see photos an Icon

Question

Photoshop CS 4. down loaded via Creative
Suite 4. My desktop runs Windows 7 64 bit.
I can NOT see each photo to work on as a "Iconl" as works in CS 3 and on my other computer; also running Win 7 64 bit.; CS 4.
What I see is a generic artificial picture instead of the real photo I put into CS 4.  For edits, I must be able to see each photo as I proceed.
PLEASE assist me, with advance thanks.
[email protected]  for replies.

Answer 1

Assuming you're talking about Windows Explorer...
Something has changed the behavior of Windows on your system.
Review Shell Extensions
There are a couple of good, free tools out there for helping you determine what Shell Extensions you have installed.  I recommend carefully reviewing the non-Microsoft Shell Extensions identified by ShellExView.
ShellExView
AutoRuns
Reinitialize Your Windows Icon Cache
Also, Windows 7 maintains an icon cache, which could be corrupted.  I recommend clearing this cache by deleting the IconCache.db file, which should cause all thumbnails to be regenerated.  There are many guides on the net that show how to do so.  This was just the first that came up in a Google search...
Turn off Caching of Thumbnails in Hidden thumbs.db Files
Lastly, Windows 7 generates hidden Thumbs.db files, which can cause problems. They're there to provide compatibility with old shell extensions or applications that expect them, though Windows itself doesn't use them if you tell it not to. I've been running Windows 7 for over a year without Thumbs.db files. Here's how to stop them from being generated.
People sometimes report that they cannot manipulate their folders as they want to because Explorer has a thumbs.db file open.  Windows 7 apparently generates these files for compatibility with older software that may expect such files to exist in folders with, for example, photos in them.
The good news is that (with Windows 7 Professional and above) you can disable this through the Group Policy Editor:
Click the Start orb
Enter gpedit.msc in the search box and hit Enter.
Expand User Configuration - Administrative Templates - Windows Components.
Click on Windows Explorer.
Right-click the entry "Turn off the caching of thumbnails in hidden thumbs.db files" and choose Edit.
Enable the setting.
If you have a version of Windows that does not provide the Group Policy Editor, and cannot do the above, the change can be done through a registry modification:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer]
    "DisableThumbsDBOnNetworkFolders"=dword:00000001
-Noel