Windows 8.1 Freezing and Refresh Failed - winload.efi error 0xc0000001

Question

Hey, everybody. I'm new to these forums so I'm sorry if I do anything wrong, and sorry for the long post.
I own a three-month-old Toshiba Satellite S50D-A that came with Windows 8 installed and ran perfectly. I was eventually asked to upgrade to Windows 8.1, and assuming it was a minor update, I immediately accepted.
Unfortunately, ever since "upgrading" to Windows 8.1, my computer has suffered some severe performance issues. Browsing the internet has become slower, games run poorly, and worst of all, my computer will randomly freeze constantly. I am still
able to move the mouse around but clicking does nothing or sometimes has a very delayed response. The computer usually resumes after a few minutes, but sometimes it suddenly resets on its own. This has become increasingly frustrating, especially when I am
in class (I am a university student) and trying to take notes when the computer freezes and sometimes resets, losing my notes.
Researching on the internet has revealed that this is not an uncommon problem with Windows 8.1, but the solutions presented online have failed to solve my problems. I've upgraded every driver on my computer which I thought was the issue but the problem has
persisted.
A couple of days ago, I left my computer for a few minutes and returned to find it had shut down and refused to turn back on. I was eventually able to restart the computer after contacting Toshiba and learning there was a reset hole I could poke a pin into,
but that episode convinced me to give up on fixing the issue and to simply return my computer to factory defaults.
If anybody has any solutions to the freeezing issue and other problems with Windows 8.1, that would be preferable, but otherwise, this brings me to my new problem. I stumbled upon Windows Refresh, the ability to return to default system settings without
losing my files. This sounded perfect as I am willing to reinstall all of my programs if it means having a properly functioning computer again. However, upon attempting the Refresh, I was presented with a blue screen that read:
RECOVERY
The Application or operating system couldn't be loaded because a required file is missing or contains errors.
File: \windows\system32\winload.efi
Error code: 0x0000001
It proceeds to tell me that I can use recovery tools to repair my computer, which brings me to my next trouble... I did not create recovery media when I still had Windows 8. I plan to go out and buy a 16gb usb stick tomorrow and create one but I'm not sure
if the Windows 8.1 recovery media will work or not.
Long story short, my computer has suffered constant freezing since updating to Windows 8.1, and my attempts to use the Refresh feature have failed due to error code 0x0000001. If anybody has a solution to any of these problems, your help would be extremely
appreciated. As a full-time student, these technology troubles have become extremely infuriating.
Thank you!

Answer 1

Please provide us with your Event Viewer administrative logs by following these steps:
Click Start Menu
Type eventvwr into Search programs and files (do not hit enter)
Right click eventvwr.exe and click Run as administrator
Expand Custom Views
Click Administrative Events
Right click Administrative Events
Save all Events in Custom View As...
Save them in a folder where you will remember which folder and save as Errors.evtx
Go to where you saved Errors.evtx
Right click Errors.evtx -> send to -> compressed (zipped) folder
Upload the .zip file to skydrive or a file sharing service and put a link to it in your next post
If you have updated to win 8.1 and you get the error message "the system cannot find the file specified" it is a known problem.  The
work around is to edit the registry.  If you are not comfortable doing this DONT.  If you are, backup the key before you do
Press Win+"R" and input regedit
Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WINEVT\Channels. Delete "Microsoft-Windows-DxpTaskRingtone/Analytic"
Wanikiya and Dyami--Team Zigzag