What:
- You’re running Windows update for Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 (I ran into this with Windows 7 after a year of no updates.)
- You see that the update has failed with error 80243004.
- Your notifications area is abnormally large
How to Fix:
- My Option: For me, I clicked in all of the blank areas of the notification area. It actually looked like there were invisible icons. This shrunk my notification area, then I was able to continue installing (55!) updates). Even if this is a machine you only use once in a while and it stays off and disconnected from the network, take it out once in a while and update it. For your sanity.
- Other Options: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itproinstall/thread/8d6e37a7-8221-407c-80e2-b6364ad6a2e4
Weird fix for a common problem.