KB5034441 Won’t Install

Known issue Because of an issue in the error code handling routine, you might receive the following error message instead of the expected error message when there is insufficient disk space:
0x80070643 - ERROR_INSTALL_FAILURE

In other words, “We apologize for the error in the error handling.”

The solution: to resize the Windows Recovery Environment so that there’s room to install the fix.

I attempted to install this update on two VMs, a custom-built desktop, and a Surface Go tablet purchased directly from Microsoft. And every one of them hit this error. Presumably the installer for Windows 10 defaulted to the smaller recovery partition, which means a lot of Windows 10 systems are probably getting the same unclear generic error that needs to be resolved using command-line tools.

Or, as it turns out, virtually all of them. Apparently even the latest ISO doesn’t create a big enough partition for this update.

Anyway, of the four, resizing the recovery partition fixed the problem for the desktop and one of the virtual machines, but not the other VM.

Strangely, the Surface Go already had a 900MB recovery partition, which should be plenty. And when I re-ran Windows Update after letting it install everything else and reboot…this one installed just fine. Something else must have been the issue here, but because of the bug in error reporting, it looked like the same one.

Update March 7

Microsoft did eventually release a PowerShell script to apply the patch. Which is probably a lot more convenient than manually resizing partitions!