It did not. It seemed to successfully download and process more of the blockchain in win 7 compatibility mode, but eventually it crashed in the same ways as before.

HOWEVER,

I have a Windows Server 2012 VM for testing purposes that wasn't needed for anything else, so I installed bitcoin core 0.11 on that, and it seems to be working perfectly. As of this morning it was almost fully synced up- 16 weeks remaining, which is closer than it ever got on my base Win 8.1 install.

Odd thing to me is that this VM is still residing on the same physical computer, so the exact same underlying hardware. I don't think it's a hardware issue, I really suspect something is lingering around on my win 8.1 install even after uninstalling that is screwing up every "fresh" install I try to do.

In any case, assuming the last 16 weeks of blockchain download and process correctly, I'll just run bitcoin core from my VM for now. I'll probably be doing a fresh install of Windows 10 when it becomes available and then I'll see how things go with that.