Photoshop CS5 Flickers Under Windows 8 64

Question

I just upgraded my Win7 64 desktop to Win8 pro 64, and now photoshop cs5 is behaving very strangely. Any mouse click operation causes the entire working window to flicker, and the background to cycle between the normal pale gray background, a window full of transparent pixel rectangles, and solid black. Although functionality is not impaired (i.e., whatever one clicked with the mouse), as you might imagine it's very distracting .
There doesn't appear to be any update from Adobe available within the help menu, so I think I'm up to date on the software.
Has anyone else run into this? Is there a fix? Is this a known incompatibility between CS5 and Win8 64? I spent hours searching online before I did the Win8 upgrade looking for compatibility information on photoshop cs5 (and the rest of the cs5 master suite) but found very little information.

Answer 1

Noel Carboni wrote:
Out of curiosity, what compelled you to buy Windows 8?
It is not a Windows 8 discussion, but since you asked -- I bought an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for $39.99 during Microsoft's promotional period. I think it was quite a compelling reason to buy a pro version of the latest OS for that price. Like it or not, Windows 7 is now 3 years old. But, hey, there're still people running XP
Also someone asked about reasons for upgrading to Windows 8. Here's mine:
1. Built-in anti-virus, improved firewall and overall security features on the kernel level. Stuff like, improved Windows drivers security, boot loader, etc.
2. Improved performance -- anything from less number of running system services to a better RAM utilization. I can attest to that. Same stuff runs faster. Also much faster boot time as well as entering and leaving sleep modes.
3. Improved Solid State Drive support "out-of-the-box". No additional set-up needed.
4. Much improved Windows Explorer. (One of the compelling reasons for me.) They returned its toolbar that was taken out in Vista and made it optional. Also made it look more like Office ribbon, which everyone is familiar with by now.
5. Much improved Task Manager. It adds a ton of useful features for a more geeky kind.
6. Less intrusive Windows updates. No more annoying popups telling you to reboot. You get a message on the lock screen and everything is installed during a reboot.
7. Much improved ways to create and do system recovery.
8. Other small tools and utilities that are very useful and are now in one place. Stuff like creation of backups and restore discs, etc.
I won't go any more into it because it is not a Windows 8 discussion. The bottom line is that all of my apps that used to work in Windows 7 seem to work just fine in Windows 8... except the Adobe CS 5 products. So you do the math... I understand that It's always easy to blame the OS maker or a driver maker. Although I do agree with you on one thing -- it is probably wise to wait until a Service Pack comes out. And it is not just because Microsoft would fix its bugs, it's mostly because all of the OEMs and software vendors will catch up to the new technologies.