Thanks for the reply Neil, I suspect that it may not in fact be Start8, it's just that last thing I did and it required a reboot. Even after uninstalling it and successfully booting, the very next time I tried the same issue occurred. So the fact that it booted after removing Start8 was probably a coincidence.
I probably have a deeper issue. If no one else is experiencing this on Windows 8.1, and as you stated it's not getting to the Start 8 code at that point, then it's my setup.
Sorry for the false alarm.
