Black screen with windows update on Windows 8.1

I recently had to roll back a windows update that was severe enough that upon login, all I got was a black screen. The only means of doing _anything_ was to reboot into safe mode and rollback the latest windows update. Upon checking my "action center", I have the following problem report for the explorer process, which mentions something that looks like a window blinds exception being thrown:

Source
Windows Explorer

Summary
Stopped working

Date
‎5/‎26/‎2014 8:42 PM

Status
Not reported

Description
Faulting Application Path:	C:\Windows\explorer.exe

Problem signature
Problem Event Name:	APPCRASH
Application Name:	Explorer.EXE
Application Version:	6.3.9600.17039
Application Timestamp:	53156588
Fault Module Name:	StackHash_cae0
Fault Module Version:	0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp:	00000000
Exception Code:	c0000005
Exception Offset:	PCH_59_FROM_WBLIND64+0x00000000000DDA80
OS Version:	6.3.9600.2.0.0.768.101
Locale ID:	1033
Additional Information 1:	cae0
Additional Information 2:	cae07e8a609bc2071a056a872275629a
Additional Information 3:	bcbb
Additional Information 4:	bcbb690e09c7f716940f2b963ab1b314

Files that help describe the problem
WERInternalMetadata.xml
AppCompat.txt
memory.hdmp
triagedump.dmp

I don't tend to run windows very often on this machine, and when I do, I tend to install a tonne of updates at once... so I'm not sure which one triggered this. The rollback claimed it was a "directx" update, but I know I installed many more than just that one.