This has prompted me to ditch W8.1 on my wife's laptop and install Linux. W8.1 had become a problem because it managed to screw itself up and would not install any updates, plus when I followed M$ advice on how to fix it that did not work and they said re-install
I was also fed up with it keep on suggesting W10 which again I did not want.
So Linux it is and working very well, my wife does not really see the difference between W8.1 (not tiled etc) and Linux desktop apart from the start menu being the Fedora f symbol everything she used on Windows is installed on Linux, LibreOffice Firefox Thunderbird and Digikam for photos.
Stuart