And another frustrated user here...
Spent the better part of two days with various hardware connected and disconnected, ran various cleans and still have this error 0x80004005. I was feeling a bit slack so actually called MS Support first which is unusual for me, and again as others mentioned seemed to have no better idea than I did. However and more importantly told me the issue is unusual and not seen often...really.
Promised to call back this morning...still waiting.