Hi Tom,
Well, that's pretty much just bad news. IMHO Microsoft does not make re-installing Window easy, especially after you've been running for a while and installed a lot of applications.
This is an older laptop, but I sprang for the top of the line in order for it to hold up long term. Well, it's done that with enough CPU, memory, and video for my needs even now. I upgraded to SSD when I upgraded from XP to a fresh install of Windows 8 Pro. That was just after the time a power surge took out the on-board ethernet. Everything else appeared to be fine including the OS, so I simply picked up a GB ethernet PC-card. The machine has been running fine ever since. So, even though I had a hardware issue, I did a fresh install of Windows 8 after on a new SSD. I'm not sure what would have corrupted it since then.
I was getting a BSOD recently, but it was due to an old card-reader driver. A Sysnative team found that out for me and I upgrade that to a driver supported by Windows 8 64bit. I still get a rare BSOD and they've determined that it's my NVidia driver. However, it's the latest for my GT9600M and a search reveals that I'm not the only one with NVidia driver issues. NVidia has gone downhill in IMHO, but being a laptop, I'm stuck with them and will apply any new ones that come along. The BSOD issue is very infrequent, so I live with it.
Given that you can't fix my upgrade issue, I'll ignore/hide those updates and not go to 8.1. I'll milk this hardware and software until I decide to I can't live without something else. I can use my NUC HTPC as my desktop and move over / install what I need from this laptop. Then install Windows 7 or Linux on the laptop for a backup. I should have upgraded to Windows 7 and not 8. Big mistake on my part.
Thanks for looking into this.