[cursing removed] Cannot start a new file... :-(

Saw something posted on a different group and it seems to work...  
On my system, the latest version will only open/start a file if I run it in ADMINISTRATOR MODE.
Fun, laughs and good times from the folks at Adobe.

My guess?   They are 'doing something clever' with Ai in the background - which does not work (in certain systems?) if it does not have 'top level authority'. 
I now have a shortcut that runs Photoshop in Admin Mode and it works the way it should.
I will now go and burn a wet haddock on my alter to Adobe's Clearly Enhanced Development Team 🙂

If the suggestion of @Derek Cross doesn't help please check if your system is up-to-date. Do you have installed all recent updates and patches for the operating system and the device drivers, especially the graphic driver. If you have a NVidia graphic card installed, make sure that you are using the recent Studio version of the driver, not the Game Ready version.

Please provide a copy of your 'System Info'. This can be get from the Photoshop menu item Help > System Info. There's a copy button in the System Info dialog. Press this button and paste the info into your next forum post.

Do you get any error messages? If yes, please post the messages here word-by-word. That may helps to identify what's the issue.

Presumably you've tried resetting the Photoshop preferences back to the factory defaults?