ampfixer
I had a very similar problem and the fix was the same. Repeated the D/L and reinstalled and it's working now. It doesn't feel right though. I can't put my finger on it but the system seems slower now and it takes a while to load projects. I'm thinking it's all about win 8 and the touch screen but nobody would ever admit it.
I have it running on Win 8 and have not seen any slowdown, in fact it may run a tiny bit better. I do not play with the touch screen at the moment, so maybe there is something there with that.
Are you seeing anything other than project loads? What about a defrag or disk cleanup?
Just some thoughts, hope it stays settled down for you,
Bob Bone