I believe i have found a work around.
1. Go to Control Panel>Windows Update>View avaliable updates
2. the list of "failed" updates will appear
3. right click the failed update
4. select "View Details"
5. go to the section labled "More Information"
6. you are taken to
www.microsoft.com/downloads7. i manually downloaded each of my failed updates and it worked fine.
This is cluegy . . . but it works!