"PVP.net Patcher Kernel has stopped working". I am now unable to start LoL.

Since 12/14/2014, my laptop has not been able to open and play League of Legends. I double-click on the LoL icon, and it opens an error window with the message "PVP.Patcher Kernel has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available." The only button choice available is to "Close Program". LoL never opens. This is frustrating because this is day #2 of the problem (I had hoped Riot Games would have a fix on the first weekday after the problem, but the same problem happens today. I have rebooted the laptop several times and tried to launch LoL many times with the same result.

The laptop with the problem has an Intel i5 processor and Windows 8.1. Interestingly, this problem does not occur on the older laptop with Windows 7. What is frustrating is that I played LoL on the Windows 8.1 laptop daily up to 12/13/2014, so something changed over the weekend. Help!!! I do want to use my faster i5 laptop (the one I am using now to type this bug report).