My only answer is downgrading back to 8. After upgrading to 8.1 from pre-installed 8 the laptop slowed down to a crawl. 'Can not display the webpage' is ever-present. Never-mind re-boot/ start-up and shut-down-- I can barely connect to the Internet. System icons disappeared and my mouse is no longer detected.
I already went through all of this in October/ 2013, when 8.1 upgrade became available. The compatibility issues were so extreme that restoring back to pre-installed 8 was the only option. Against my better judgment someone convinced me that upgrading to 8.1 was a good idea- adding that the newest (April/2014) update to the 8.1 upgrade was amazing.
No. Not even. This laptop is barely functioning, now. Every update makes the situation worse. Who has time for this?! How many hours each day are we supposed to devote to troubleshooting all that's wrong with Microsoft Windows 8 and it's creepy, even glitchier upgrade, 8.1...?!
Some tech support agents are quick to point out how painfully slow my high-speed Internet is-- as if THAT is what's caused this. Really?! Because my backup laptop running Windows 7 is fine. Same high-speed, same everything. When this laptop was running 8 it was fine.
I wasn't happy with 8 due to the bugs but at least I could handle them. In the last 2 weeks (since upgrading to 8.1) this laptop has been use-able MAYBE 5 days total. Just the thought of the back-to-pre-installed-Windows 8-factory-settings/, full-throttle recovery (3 1/2+ hours), going through all of the Windows 8 updates all over again and trying to get this thing back to some semblance of functionality is going to require days but that's the only solution that makes sense to me.
Maybe those with pre-installed 8.1 have a different experience. But this laptop came with 8 and it's going back to 8.