Yes, that does seem like a pretty straightforward hardware configuration and I've certainly felt similar pains in the past. For a period of several months Windows 8/8.1 on my laptop refused to download and install updates due to some persistent error coming from Microsoft's WU infrastructure. There was page after page of people complaining about the issue on Microsoft's public forums without even an acknowledgment from Microsoft that the issue existed.

In desperation, I ended up running WSUS inside a VM and pointing my laptop at that VM in order to get updates installed. :-/