Yeah, I figured it out yesterday, and was able to image my WIndows 8.1 Pro SSD Drive.
My problem was that the OS was 32 bit and that I was using Lili (Linux Live Usb Creator), Lili was pulling the 32bit OS from the web.
When I downloaded Rufus and a proper 64bit Mint distribution, and used Rufus to image the USB stick, voila it booted right away.
Then I was able to DD my windows 8 drive. A note on that, if you image your Windows 8 installation in Linux you have to do a proper windows shut down via cmd line... "shutdown /s /f /t 0"
If you don't do this the Windows drives will not mount do to the hiber file existing.
Cheers and thanks for the help.