BITS and wuauserv Hung "Stopping": Should I clean install?

Gang I have a fairly fresh 8.1 installed clean on a Dell Latitude, but after it downloaded a pile of updates, it came back very shaky on the next boot. Tracing through all the Red Errors I suspect the root is that on a restart, the system is in a state as though it were returning from sleep/hibernate not from cold/dead start because wuauserv never gets out of the "stopping" mode. I have run the Windows FIXIT for update process problems and it too hung in a loop for, oh an hour or so.

With this much damage I'm wondering if I should just reformat and start afresh.

Thoughts??

Well, a reformat and fresh install may be the quickest fix, but will remove all your data so if you have a backup go for it.