if you find a way Microsoft could you let the community know the secret...
You can do a couple of things actually.. change your connection to metered, disable the service by hitting Windows, type services.msc, right click and open as administrator and then right click Windows Update and change it from Automatic to Disabled, you can also use Group Policy unless you're using a Home Edition.
If the update is already downloaded and prompting you repeatedly for another failed attempt, do some or all of the above steps and then to delete the downloaded updates right click to run as administrator and open Cmd (command prompt) and type:
net stop wuauserv
cd %Windir%\SoftwareDistribution
del /f /s /q Download
net start wuauserv
If you have an issue with net start wuauserv working from doing everything listed, you need to restart Windows Update Service in services.msc again, but I'd only worry about that if you're trying to see if the update will work after a second go. I had to do a fresh install on my SSD and copied everything from Windows.old to my fresh installation and then ran a backup of my registry settings I had made with CCleaner before wiping it.. good times.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
