Display Driver Problems

I'll start from the beginning of my problem.

Yesterday, I notice that the right-click context menu on my Windows 8.1 laptop was taking over 30 seconds for it to appear. I Google'd the problem and found out that its related to an issue with the Nvidia context entry. I then tried to open the Nvidia control panel and it wound't let me. I got an error that said "You are not connected to a display connected to an Nvidia GPU." Of course I'm not! I'm on a bloody laptop that has the 750M for processing and HD 4600 for output. 

So I battled that problem for a while. Nothing I did fixed the "you are not connected..." Nvidia error. I loaded a system image I made back in March when everything was working the way it should and that still gave the same error. I even did a FULL system wipe with a fresh install. Nothing. So after about 4 different formats and trying different drivers I tried my system image again and now it works. WTF!? And now I seem to have this problem where Windows 8.1 is not shutting down all the way. 

Currently running 331.65 version drivers that appear to be stable. 

Can someone please explain?