Okay, I got this working. I tried to install, and then uninstall 4 or 5 times. I used the Windows 8.1 Add/remove programs to do the uninstall each time.
When I did this (5th iteration of different ideas) SS loaded. I am assuming all is well but haven't transferred a track yet.
First, I took the Sonic Stage Ultimate v.2 from this forum and extracted it manually with 7Zip. Then I went to each of the setup.exe files, as well as setupss.exe and used the "properties" to make them all run as administrator. After reboot, I made sure to set omgjbox.exe to run in Windows XPSP3 compatibility mode, and as administrator.
After I did that, Sonic Stage loads up.