The blue screen after dialing up a broadband connection on WINDOWS 8 / WINDOWS 8.1 (Win8 / Win8.1) had been a real headache for me. Yesterday I saw online that someone had fixed it; I tried it and it really worked. Let me first describe my symptoms: the computer worked fine with a router, but when I used a broadband connection to dial up (PPPoE), it would blue-screen, freeze, and reboot after a while. I tried many things — updating the network card driver, rolling back the network card driver — none worked. 
Someone pointed out the blue screen is caused by Hyper-V, which comes built into WINDOWS 8 / WINDOWS 8.1 (Win8 / Win8.1). Hyper-V is a virtual machine that provides a virtual switch service. Because Hyper-V supports virtual switch functionality, the network card inside the virtual system must connect to the virtual switch before it can access the network. It’s likely caused by a network card driver conflict, and you can fix the blue screen by disabling the Hyper-V feature or removing the virtual switch, then rebooting and reconnecting broadband. I didn’t disable the whole Hyper-V feature; I just removed the virtual switch, then used the broadband connection again and it’s been fine — stable, no blue screen. So how did I end up with Hyper-V installed? Because I’m a C#.NET developer, I install Visual Studio 2013 on my computer, and Visual Studio 2013 installs Windows Phone–related features, which activates Hyper-V, since Windows Phone is created inside this virtual machine and accesses the network through these network components. Also, I use virtual machines to run other systems, so I kept using Hyper-V — who would have thought the culprit was Hyper-V. 
As a young new system, WINDOWS 8 / WINDOWS 8.1 (Win8 / Win8.1) still has many shortcomings, but I hope everyone can be understanding — after all, an operating system is huge and complex, and design flaws are inevitable.
