Well, before I realised there was a Microsoft distribution problem, I restored my usually well behaved W7 system back to 27/11/2017 as I assumed a corrupted download, post then. Then, of course I could not re-download the intervening updates. However, I have just used Control Panel's "windows update" and the previous 'Update blocked' message has gone away. Whether the updates will re-download remains to be seen ? In the absence of any other heads up, it looks like it may have been sorted automatically, for me at least. Jusy glad I didn't fiddle too quickly as I have before with XP and Vista !
Interesting posts re Vista - I'll try my laptop that has Vista, as it had stopped updating previously.
Any other news on this front, please shout.
Standing by.....
Ah -well, my previous post (above) was far, far too hasty as I now have the error message "could not search for new updates" back, but it is now 80244109 ? Help is at hand, no doubt ??