Noel,
you are assuming a lot. 90% of photoshop users are not technical gurus. Your post is 30% help and 70% rant. You can throw things at people like Sysinternals, etc and they won't have any idea how to use the tools. You are here to help the end-user not to criticize them on how to run a proper system. You're apparently a technical person. End-users, no matter how much teaching will not be techs or system admins. They are focused on doing what they know (which involves photoshop). Your passion is technical theirs is not. The information you gave is good so don't get me wrong. Most people just won't understand what to do with it.
This 2nd part is to Tommasso:
The base issue with Photoshop not opening/saving things seemingly only happens when there is a conflict of some program(s) running: Chrome plugins can disable PS CS6. Maleware can disable the opening, or editing of things in PS. Video drivers that seemingly conflict against PS.
Best bet is to use: Malwarebytes (free version) scan your system. Use ESET online scanner, (install, update, scan) on your system. Remove anything that was installed around the time PS was not working (including browser addon/plugins) if you are not sure try to use the system restore feature (link is for windows 7). Restore back to a day, a week before things started to not work properly.
I run adobe products on both platforms: Mac and Windows (Window 7 for myself). I have had the same issue as you have described. I have resolved it by the doing the steps I listed above. I have re-installed things to see if I could make the same issue reappear. You shouldn't have to do more than those steps. These are non-intrusive fixes.
This may or may not help: I have an Nvidia GTX 760 running driver version: 332.21. Nvidia lets you download previous drivers. Do not use Nvidia's software for updating. "Nvidia experience".