There's been a large amount of people like you complaining about mysterious crashes and complete lacks of working in the first place. Basically, unless dolphin were to make core dumps on crashes (I don't really know if it does), a lot of these crashes can't seem to be solved. They're really strange.
Though, question: do you happen to be using a fully-updated Windows 8.1? It seems to me that a lot of the people experiencing these crashes ARE on a fully-updated Windows 8.1. I also noticed that I'm not getting these crashes and I'm exactly one update from being completely up-to-date. It MIGHT have something to do with the latest update to Windows 8.1, some of these crashes. The rest, I don't know.
If you delete the common folder under your user documents and see if it fixes anything (back it up first, of course), that MIGHT be helpful. And, if it is helpful, it might be helpful to also bisect the version numbers to find which version the issue seems to start at, if it's related to a dolphin version.
Though, question: do you happen to be using a fully-updated Windows 8.1? It seems to me that a lot of the people experiencing these crashes ARE on a fully-updated Windows 8.1. I also noticed that I'm not getting these crashes and I'm exactly one update from being completely up-to-date. It MIGHT have something to do with the latest update to Windows 8.1, some of these crashes. The rest, I don't know.
If you delete the common folder under your user documents and see if it fixes anything (back it up first, of course), that MIGHT be helpful. And, if it is helpful, it might be helpful to also bisect the version numbers to find which version the issue seems to start at, if it's related to a dolphin version.
in a perfect world we would all be piles of sand with no ability to form coherent bodies of body