The following did the trick for me. LR, Bridge, ACR and PS are now working as they should.
This comes from the following Adobe Help File.
Troubleshoot unexpected behaviour in user accounts5. Reset the access settings on the account-specific application data folders.
Complete this task only if the account that you are troubleshooting is an administrator account and is not on a network domain.
Account-specific errors can occur if the account doesn't have full read/write access to the folders with the Adobe application preferences files and account-specific data files. You can use the icacls command to reset the access settings. Do the following:
Close all applications.
Choose Start > All Programs > Accessories. Right-click Command Prompt and choose Run As Administrator. A command-line window opens.
In the command-line window, type each of the following commands exactly as they appear below. Press Enter after each command.
Important: Type a space before and after each of the switches -- /T, /C, and /grant -- in every command.
icacls "%userprofile%\AppData\Local" /T /C /grant "%username%":F
icacls "%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming" /T /C /grant "%username%":F
icacls "%userprofile%\AppData\Local" /T /C /grant system:F
icacls "%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming" /T /C /grant system:F
Close the command-line window.
Open the Adobe application and try to reproduce the issue.
I did and this solution worked!!What I find interesting is that this issue occurred when I upgraded from 7.1 to 7.2. Now from 7.2 to 7.3 the same issue occurred. I wonder if this is something specific to my machine or something with a wider impact?