Ok, thanks HP for the help on this one :smileymad:
But I managed to sort it out myself. After downloading/extracting the Driver Pack from HP, I manually installed the Intel Chipset drivers from c:\SwSetup\Drivers\Chipset\Setup.exe. It rebooted and now everything is working smoothly and I suppose because I installed the Graphics driver from Windows Update, this chipset install did not overwrite the Graphics driver since the Start screen is still smooth. Hope this helps anyone experiencing the same issue.
Enjoy the 8.1!!!!