If you have Windows 8.1 with an Intel Processor and you are trying to install Android Studio you will most likely get the following bug when you try to run the Android emulator:
emulator: ERROR: x86 emulation currently requires hardware acceleration!
Please ensure Intel HAXM is properly installed and usable.
CPU acceleration status: HAX kernel module is not installed!
The best thing to do is first get to your BIOS screen. On Windows 8.1 the way to do that is press the Shift key and restart. (Yep, it's true, it's not the normal Esc, F2 or F10). It really is shift and restart. You MUST be holding shift key down while going to restart or it doesn't work.
Once you do that a few times and actually get a blue screen with some options on it.
You should see Continue, Use a Device, Troubleshoot, Turn off PC:
Pick Troubleshoot
Then you should see Refresh your PC, Reset your PC, Advanced Options:
Pick Advanced Options
Then you should see a screen that says System Restore, System Image Recovery, Startup Repair, Command Prompt, UEFI Firmware settings, Startup Settings:
Pick UEFI Firmwhere settings.
Then it will tell you to restart to change settings and hit the restart button to do so.
Then, you will see a BIOS screen with the menu Information, Configuration, Security, Boot, Exit:
Pick Configuration.
Under Configuration hit arrow down until you get to Intel Virtual Technology.
Enable it.
Then, go to Exist and navigate down to Exit and save changes.
Confirm you want to save changes.
On your Android SDK Manager go to the Extras directory and under that you will see Intel x86 Emulator Accelerator (HAXM installer)
if it is not installed, install it.
If it is installed, it's not really installed quite yet (but if you don't install it first, the next part won't work. Next download the installer from the website separately from here https://software.intel.com/en-us/android/articles/intel-hardware-accelerated-execution-manager
It will be a zipped file, unzip it and then once unzipped click to install. Don't pick the default values. 1024 mb is not enough memory, do the 1.5Gb option.
If you don't install it right the first time or options don't wok for you, just follow the installation steps again and configure the memory setting. (The only way to change it is to re-install but to pick the option to fix instead of complete re-install).
And after that it worked for me. I found some of the previous things on Stack Overflow but their solutions didn't work so after this maybe it was Intel core specific on windows 8.1.