Windows hangs boot after upgrading any software

Question

Hi,
My Windows 8 Pro x64 Dell XPS8500 machine developed a really weird problem.  (The problem actually began a while back - first noticed maybe 4-6 month ago - but only now trying to fix it.)  It re/boots fine so long as I don't try to install anything. 
However, installing any software upgrades causes Windows to hang on boot.  The software upgrades that I tried are Evernote, iTunes, Java VM, and all of them are triggering the same behavior.  All this aforementioned software seeming doesn't have
anything in common.  The only known upgrades that do not appear to trigger the issue are Firefox and Chrome (where upgrades happen more or less in passive fashion)  There is no clear event that I can recall in the past that I can attribute this happening
to (i.e. I can't pin point to something like installing a driving and it failing immediately afterwards) - just one day a message popped up to upgrade iTunes, which I did, and then rebooted to experience the issue.
Here are the steps to describe what happens with a bit more detail and troubleshooting steps tried:
Manually launch upgrade of an existing software. (Tried Evernote, iTunes, Java VM)
Successfully go through the install/upgrade.  Seems irrelevant if software asks for reboot or not.  Machine works fine until rebooted.
Reboot the machine.  Machine shuts down without any issues.
BIOS POST is successful, and Dell logo with jumping/circulating dots comes up.
There is a normal flurry of hard-disk activity for a few seconds, which after a few seconds reduces to none or sometimes/occasionally to very brief flashing a few seconds apart.  This is where the problem is noticed.  It can stay like that for
hours if not days (normal boot takes about 20-30 seconds).
Typically, if there is no hard-disk activity at all, pressing the power button causes one brief flash, followed by one more about 1-3 seconds later, and no change.
The only recourse is to force turn off by holding power button for few seconds.
Letting it try to boot again leads to the same behavior.
Repeating attempts to boot 3-4 times causes Automatic Recovery to kick in.
The only way to get the machine to boot again is to use Recovery to restore to a previous state.  This sometimes requires to be done more than once and doesn't fix on the first try. 
(Also, I enabled Win boot menu, and couple of times instead of waiting for Automatic Recovery to kick in, tried to use recovery through the menu - in that case it's more likely to require the procedure to be done more than once).
I tried to do a logged boot to capture log file in one of the cases where it boots - it appears to never produce \Windows\ntbtlog.txt file (possible I didn't do something right for this one, though I thought that file is never deleted and only grows)
Additional Info:  SysRestore currently displays only two available points:
6/13/14 - Installed Evernote v. 5.4 - Type Install
6/9/14 - Automatic Restore Point - Type System
All other previous restore points (from having installed a few more updates and software in the 1.5 years I had the machine) are gone somewhere.
Choosing to revert to the second restore point (when selecting restore point from boot menu) as opposed to the first one and later booting successfully, for some reason the same restore points are listed again (so it doesn't seem to be truly reverting)
Nothing fruitful appears in the EventLog.  The only critical messages that i see there are both from SCM and one reads "The Dell Digital Delivery Service service terminated unexpectedly.  It has done this 1 time(s)." and the other "The
system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly." (which is expected).  And there is a warn level entry about some Bluetooth device not being
able to enter power save mode.  That's it for system event logs.
At this point I'm totally stuck trying to figure this one out, or even trying to figure out how to obtain information on where it gets stuck.  This is worse than having a BSOD as with BSOD at least there is some info on what's happening.  Here
I don't even see where it gets stuck or what's preventing from booting successfully.
Please help!!!

Answer 1

Here is the link to the SrtTrail.txt file: 
http://1drv.ms/1sh7rCy
Again, let me clarify the situation as well as provide some additional information that I discovered since original post.  Per original post - I can boot into the system up and  until installer gets activated either by trying to uninstall or upgrade
existing software or install new one.  At the time, the only way I could get the system to boot again was to let it fail boot twice and on the third attempt let it perform system restore from a restore point, and then it would boot again (with all the
installed/updated/uninstall changes wiped out)
Since then I discovered the following additional behavior points:
I managed to get it to accept couple of software upgrades by using roughly the following steps: let it fail boot twice.  On the third attempt instead of choosing system restore I instead cancel or choose advanced options (depending on what it offers). 
Typically it goes either through some system analysis or disk check for errors - wait and it doesn't find anything.  When presented with a menu of other recovery options (like changing UEFI, command prompt, etc), I simply choose to exit and continue loading
windows.  At this point it sometimes (I'd say 1 out of 3 times) manages to boot successfully, retaining all the changes (i.e. retaining software updates and the like).  If it doesn't succeed booting, repeat until it does.  Using these steps
I managed to update most of software so far, including windows update.  But each time it's a struggle to get it to boot again.
Simply rebooting the system without any changes succeeds most of the time.  However, today I noticed that a plain reboot (without any installer/uninstaller/update or any other system/soft/config changes) doesn't always succeed, requiring the same process
as in previous bullet point to get it to boot again.
I also noticed an additional behavior - my keyboard an mouse have some buttons that are illuminated (on dell keyboard those are media buttons, and on the dell mouse it is mouse sensitivity indicator). I noticed that when windows boot up, the keyboard and
mouse lights go out simultaneously.  If they come back about a second or two later (with one flicker in between), then system boots up fine (the moment they come back, the system displays the logon screen with the seatle space needle).  However,
if they don't come back, then the boot will hang there for ever.  Is it possible that some driver sometimes succeeds to be loaded correctly, and sometimes fails to load causing Windows to perpetually wait for that driver to finish loading (which it never
does)?  If that sounds like a possibility, how can I find out what is it that windows is doing when it starts to perpetually wait for whatever it is waiting for?  Tell me what logs would help to understand that and how to capture those!
Also note that I run Avira Antivir antivirus (ever since I got this PC), and it doesn't flag anything suspicious on the system.  I also ran MalwareBytes scan which found no suspects, as well as GMER rootkit scanner (which as far as i can tell, also
did not find anything suspicious).
There is another oddity that is going on with the system - may or may not be related, so mentioning just in case it is - which is that I'm using Dropbox, and it keeps creating "My Videos" folder on the Desktop, even though it is way outside of my dropbox
root.  Deleting the folder doesn't help as the moment I right-click on the Desktop, it re-appears.  It, oddly enough, also appears in C:\Users\{profile} folder right along side real "My Videos" folder.  Looking properties of both in explore
shows in the property pages that one is located in C:\Users\{profile} and another in C:\Users\{profile}\Desktop (and again, yet both of those explore shows in C:\Users\{profile}).  Like I said, not sure if these are related (I suspect not, but who knows),
so mentioning just in case.
Note that I'm trying to fix it without going through refresh or reset since the first one would cause the pain to reinstall of all the software on the system (without any indication that this would solve the issue), and the later option would just completely
wipe out everything off of the system, which is even more painful, and again would not guarantee solution (e.g. if it is a bad driver that would get reinstalled anyway after wipe. Yes, I technically do have backups, but those are more for drastic case if my
harddrive crashes, and wouldn't want to rely on those to voluntarily wipe the system due to odd behaviors - too painful and time-consuming.  I'm looking for a solution to problem rather than just-start-from-the-beginning-because-it-is-easier approach.
Thanks, let me know how to get the troubleshooting info to get to root cause.