[kyoo]

[...] Lesson learned: be aware when plugging in USB Hubs into the NUC.. perhaps it was draining too much power and the processor went to a crawl, once the Windows drivers activated it..

Is this a issue currently present? If so - do you happen to have a powered USB hub you could test with?

I don't really have any USB hubs at home other than this old iMac keyboard.. I'm not sure what characteristic of that keyboard created this issue.. I did read some about it, and recall reading RasberryPi folks having power issues specifically when plugging in USB hubs.. that's what gave me the idea that it might be the HUB in the keyboard causing the issue.. but this is merely a guess.. A regular PC USB keyboard worked fine.. and the iMac mouse that I had plugged into the iMac keyboard worked fine when I plugged it directly into the NUC.. I will say that OpenELEC had no problems with the iMac keyboard.. though I don't think I ever plugged the matching mouse into the keyboard's USB socket when running OpenELEC.. Also, the NUC's visual bios seemed to work fine w/ the iMac Keyboard/Mouse last night.. it was just when Win8.1 was firing up that it slowed to molasses..