Multiple Issues W/ Win8 (Not 8.1)

I'm having weird issues with Windows 8 (Asus in my sig) , and no online fixes have solved my troubles.

1. CPU skips to Turbo freq sometimes while idle, and the fan was acting odd as well. I have linked this to Intel's "intel dynamic platform and thermal framework driver (Not sure if I really need this installed or not)

2. Cannot update to 8.1, tried wsrest.exe, refreshing windows, restarting, installing every update, removing all antivirus, etc. & it refuses to start.

3. SuperFetch & Windows Search caused the HDD activity to stay near 100%, so I disabled them

4. Power plan reverts my changes, I want the max processor state to remain at 50% to disable Turbo while on battery

5. Sometimes Windows Updates remains at 0% even if it's downloading updates, unsure of how to fix

 

Windows 8 was sort of a bad lemon. Do what ever you have to do (Reinstall windows, it seems?) to get 8.1 on that thing. It runs beautifully and I have not had any issues what so ever with it.

 

That is because most people didn't like the UI, MS made some bad UI decisions and couldn't even make a tutorial worth a damn. The actual OS itself UI aside was no more a lemon than Windows 7 was at launch. A case can be made for some a small amount of features that were removed as well, but the behavior the OP is experiencing is not normal and while could be related to a borked install, is in no way a byproduct of Widows 8 itself.

If the install is rather new, Windows will do stuff in the background at first which will make the CPU usage spike, this also happens after certain types of windows updates, especially .net framework updates.

Sounds like the install is kinda borked by now or your system reserved partition is "too small" for windows 8.1. I have seen the update decide not to like the system reserved partition if it was 100 MB in size, sometimes it works. That is one thing I could never realy get my finger on why, but that was what I narrowed it down to when I updated my elitebook to 8.1.

those will always cause HDD activity at first, if you refresh, reinstall, etc. Let them do their work and the activity caused by those services will go down after a couple of days.

My guess: Asus power 4 gear which is on the default Asus installs is messing with you. I've had mixed results with that particular utility.

That one is a know Windows 8 and 8.1 "issue". I say that with quotation marks because the updates are still getting down, you'll see the bar jump from 0 to a high percentage eventually. How long this takes depends on your hardware. It takes much longer on my atom tablet than it does on my M6700.

Honestly, at this point, I would just backup all data, wipe the drive, reinstall Windows 8, upgrade to 8.1 and then reinstall all drivers, utilities from Asus that you need/want, reinstall programs and put the data back on the computer. While I disagree no the statement that 8 was a sort of a bad lemon as far as the OS kernel is concerned, I agree with the reinstall suggestion.

 

I seem to remember Windows 8 having tons of issues besides the UI. I think most were driver issues but still. Also since he has update issues maybe this is a sign as well?

Looking at the above statements how could CPU spikes for behind the scene OS setup on a new install and be a borked install by now? My guess here is it was messed up to start with so the suggestion of starting from scratch is not a bad idea.

 

I'm not saying they're both, I was just putting forth possible reasons for the various things the OP observed. The CPU spikes could be normal stuff kicking in, but the install might still be borked regarding the rest. imo it's kinda hard to tell without having access to the laptop ourselves.

 

Ah, ok. As mentioned though for the OP best bet is a punt, get a new installation of Windows 8 and then upgrade to 8.1.

 

Forgot to update, anyway Windows 8.1/Update 1 has successfully installed now!