Windows update error 0x80248007

With increasing frequency over the last year I stumble over the problem where a Windows 10 machine will fail to install updates with error 0x80248007. Once this happens you're "stuck" and updates will fail forever more. This seems to only happen when major Windows 10 operating system updates are involved. Extensive web searches produce conflicting and dangerous advice about how to overcome this problem, and some of the less frightening suggestions just don't work. Here is a typical problem screen:

The only way to overcome this problem is to go to the Microsoft Update Catalog web site and search for the specific updates that have failed, download them, then install them from oldest to newest. Here's a typical search result with a download link for a large update:

Updates then install correctly (see next picture) the and Windows Update status and history return to a sensible state.

Perhaps I'm lucky. Your mileage may vary.

Orthogonal Programming

VMware Workstation and Device/Credential Guard are not compatible

Each year or so, or after a big Windows update I can't launch VMWare Workstation due to the error in this post's title. And each time this happens I can't remember what I did last time to fix it, so I run some searches and find dozens of variations of ridiculously complicated answers that I remember DO NOT work. Changing Device Guard policy seemed sensible but it didn't work for me. Just run this command as admin:

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

Then reboot. This seems to have no ill effects. I don't use Hyper-V on my work computer, and it doesn't interfere with development of UWP apps (which used to need Hyper-V installed).

Orthogonal Programming