Hello Sarge,
My uneducataed guess would be “if it can’t be loaded, it might be missing.” With that said, I am also running Win 8.1.1 with Avast 2014.9.0.2018 and here are the specific locations where that DLL exists (on my rig):
http://s27.postimg.org/ty5priev7/Screenshot_129.png
This issue seems to be popping up more frequently and I have seen many recommendations indicating this DLL is required to be resident in other locations on one’s PC; however, I do not have that DLL resident in any of those “alternate” locations so I would try the following:
Make sure that DLL is resident in both locations (as identified above).
If missing from one but resident in the other, try to copy the resident copy to the location where it is missing.
If no joy from the above, try a repair install.
If still no joy, download avastclear, run it, and then do a clean install of the latest Avast version.
http://www.avast.com/en-us/uninstall-utility
Good luck,
plsrepli