Usually for me it's two Windows Update ActiveX extensions for IE that need to updated before it even lets you get anywhere, a an update to the update installer

Usually for me it's two Windows Update ActiveX extensions for IE that need to updated before it even lets you get anywhere, a an update to the update installer, a round of ~40 updates including IEX which pops up a dialog in the background that blocks installation, and then once it's 'finished' there will be at least one more round of updates if you close it and reopen it. As bad as Microsoft's clusterfuck is, Adobe's is orders of magnitude worse!