Patrick O'Callaghan writes:
I'm no expert either, but by coincidence I fired up a Win10 VM yesterday for the first time in several months and (after taking ages to update itself) it worked without problems. Is this issue only appearing with new VM installations?
Currently the problem is limited to one particular Windows update failing to install, reporting an obscure hex error code. Who knows what the story would be tomorrow.
Searching for that hex error code finds only the typical B.S. about turning off firewalls, cleaning the cache, etc. Only by searching for both the error code and the specific update will lead you to the link I gave earlier.