Error: 0x80073712 when installing KB 2919355

I absolutely agree with everything you have said. My computer is not even a year old and have  had no problems until now.

After all the head scratching, I finally caved in and called MS support and spent a little over 2 hours on the phone.  It would have been longer but the call ran into the centers quitting time.  Essentially support repeated a few of the steps I took but with a couple of variations.  The significant new steps were –

Ran DISM /online /cleanup-image /startcomponentcleanup

Rebooted

Verified KB2919442 was installed (it was)

Downloaded the individual components of KB2919355 from

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42335

Closing time came right as KB2919355 was running and I was instructed to follow the order below -

Clearcompressionflag.exe, KB2919355, KB2932046, KB2959977, KB2937592, KB2938439, and KB2934018.  This took the better part of 2 hours albeit I wasn’t glued to the desk all the time.  A Level 2 call was set up for this morning which turned out to be unnecessary because after installing all of the components w/o any errors the OS seems to be running fine. 

On a side note, I would recommend installing EMET 4.1 for additional protection.

um ok. im glad this worked for you but i tried this.

Ran DISM /online /cleanup-image /startcomponentcleanup

"error 14098

the component store has been corrupted"

rebooted

downloaded individual components for the THIRD time...downloads from 4/15, 4/27 and 5/18 all have exactly the same number of bytes...so i dont think anything at all has changed from microsofts end.

verified KB2919442 was installed by downloading for 3rd time and trying to install because my update history shows 22 failures of kb2919355...so my history of installing KB2919442 is buried and/or removed from all the "fixes" ive tried to get this stupid update installed. in any case, it was already installed.

ran Clearcompressionflag.exe - nothing seemed to happen

ran Clearcompressionflag.exe - nothing seemed to happen

ran Clearcompressionflag.exe a third time - nothing seemed to happen

...not sure if i'm supposed to get some sort of message with this or not???

ran KB2919355 - it failed for 23rd time after avast blocked something during the install twice

"Suspicious file blocked!

Avast! Web Shield has blocked a harmful webpage or file.

Object: [...]

Infection: Win32:Evo-gen [Susp]

Process: [...]"

This appears to be a false positive as [susp] means it is exhibiting suspicious behavior http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=140551.0

so i disconnected from internet, disabled avast

ran KB2919355 - it failed for 24th time

and on your side note, what exactly will  Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit 4.1 Update 1 do for me that Malwarebytes, avast, spywarebot, avg, etc wont do....is there something Microsoft knows about a threat that its not sharing?

nevermind. downloaded and installed. like avast, malicious software removal tool, malwarebytes, glary, and spybot, it shows/finds absolutely nothing wrong on my system other than some tracking cookies.

ran KB2919355 - it failed for 25th and 26th time with the avast blocking. the file in chest shows up 3x as

C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download\c4f773201ad8a9011e06c2ba0e830cda\inst$dpx$.tmp

and as

[Chest] C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download\c4f773201ad8a9011e06c2ba0e830cda\inst$dpx$.tmp\86cb5a3ddf2d7b4c87e707488086cbe7.tmp

when reporting as a false positive. NOTE that this only occurs when installing this 8.1 upgrade from the ms website and that i have already tried disabling the av!

honestly at this point, it would be easier to locate drivers for linux, or see about "downgrading" to windows 7 on my hp laptop. at least those os's have upgrades that work. ive never had an os upgrade this bad on any platform - win95,98,2k,xp,7, mac7,8,9,x (although i did not participate in the Lion debacle), redhat, or debian. 25 unsuccessful tries on a <1 year old laptop is ridiculous. i should have stayed with 7, 8 is worse than Me was!