Something must have gone wrong in the install. I rolled back to the preview version for now. I'll try again after X3c is released.

Feel like I been raped. Since nobody brought this up, just my dumb again for not reading the fine print.
 
Installed the preview version of win 8.1 several months ago. Good vibes, check out what the MS bastards got in store for you. Send in your beta experience so win 8.1 will be the best OS in the universe. Win 8.1 final a free upgrade.
 
Win 8.1 released now with the threat of the preview beta designed to crash in Jan 2014. Knew this would terminate. Take action quick before we wipe you out. No problem on a dated expiration of a beta.
 
Problem for me was you can't update from the preview and maintain your current profile without spending 120-200 dollars to get an install that won't wipe everything out.
 
Legal crap in the fine print is that you can go back to win 8 and get the free update after you have tested it and given us your feedback.
 
Several months of progressive changes to be anihilated if I elect to go back to the computer out of the box. Did this and spent about 20 hours reinstalling and tweaking things to back where they were before the ripoff.
 
Respect MS for how they have advanced global communication. Gates foundation respect for charitable contributions.
 
These guys can roast in hell for holding the lay user hostage. Severely immoral business practices.
 
My advice if I'm not missing something critical...
 
Don't install the win 8.1 preview, which they still have out there as bait to destroy your operating system.
 
Estimate I worked for under 10 dollars per hour to flip these bastards the middle finger.
 
John

Have you checked out the Microsoft has a web page 
Update from Windows 8.1 Preview to Windows 8.1
 
Or using the Windows 8 Transfer Wizard?
 
I feel for you.  For me an OS install is a major pain because it takes me weeks to finish getting all my stuff installed and my tweaks done.
 
With Microsoft OS's I've always been reluctant to use a preview or beta version on anything other than a non-production system (something that I didn't care if it crashed & burned) or on a VM. There may have been an exception of two but my experience has been that the only stable way to migrate to the official release was to do a reformat and reinstallation.  Hopefully that won't be necessary in your case.
 
 
 

Stephen,
 
I did see the page and was where I found the grim news.
 
Problem with a transfer wizard is they have you download the upgrade from their store. They have also made the decision that no ISO upgrade files will be made available. If they see you are running the preview 8.1, the download link is not there so you don't have a destination to preserve. As soon as I reverted back to my computer out of the box (win8) the "free" upgrade was there.
 
Wish I'd taken your advice earlier about beta OS. Never again.
 
They covered themselves well from the start since after the installation it took out any restore points for win 8.  It was also my fault for not doing a backup before installing.
 
Things are back somewhat to normal. Results for all will vary, but I'm not getting any great benefit from 8.1 over 8.0.
 
The upgrade adds a mandatory login by default and leaves a huge amount of debris in the C:\windows.old directory, which if you were running win preview, it is just garbage. I can post how to get rid of these if anyone needs.
 
Another thing some may find useful. My understanding is that the user interface was one of the main complaints that win 8.1 was trying to address. I've used a program called Classic Shell on win 7 and win 8. This restores the start menu presentation of XP and makes it a lot easier to move around the programs. It is free, works well and was just updated a couple days ago to work more efficiently with win 8.1.
 
http://www.classicshell.net/
 
Best to all,
 
John