I have made sure the Virtual management service is running and tried to run the HyperV manager as Admin as was suggested, but nothing works. All I get is "Hyper-V encountered an error trying to access an object on the computer 'localhost", because the object was not found'...

Am I supposed to do something before going into the HyperV manager?

It sounds like you don't have the full hyper-V installed, just the management console.   To run the full Hyper-V, you need a PC running Windows 8 Pro or Enterprise, 64-bit version, on a PC with VT-x and EPT.   Here's a utility to check your hardware:   https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc835722.aspx     Use the -v switch.  

I ran your coreinfo -v and the display shows:

HYPERVISOR - Hypervisor is present

VMX * Supports Intel hardware-assisted virtualization

EPT - Supports Intel extended page tables (SLAT)

Well, you don't have Hyper-V installed and you can't install it (at least in your current config)

The "-" in "HYPERVISOR - Hypervisor is present" means Hyper-V is not installed.

Also, your CPU/MB/BIOS does not have EPT or EPT enabled, so you cannot run Hyper-V. EPT is a requirement.  

The - means not present/not supported, the * means present/supported

What is your CPU, a Core2 model?

Its a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9559 @ 2.83 Ghz running Win 8.1 Pro 64 bit OS

Yep, Core 2's do not have SLAT, so no Windows 8 Hyper-V.

The server version of Hyper-V doesn't require SLAT, so you could try the free Hyper-V 2012 R2, but keep in mind this is a full OS that will replace your existing Windows 8 OS.

Alternately, you can use a type 2 hypervisor like VMware Player or Workstation, or VirtualBox.