Having experienced a few problems with the latest set of Windows 7 Updates for August 2012 I thought I would create this post to possibly assist others.
Firstly the problem seems to only impact 64 bit versions of windows, since 32bit seems to work successfully.
The problem manifests itself as a ‘Failure to apply updates’ following the forced reboot, causing it to fall back to the created restore point.
The cause seems to be fix KB2647753 which can be applied upon its own but not in combination with the others.
Up to 12 updates may be required depending upon the system being updated, but the solution appears to be to select KB2647753 and install it on its own, and then following the reboot (which showed a message about updating the registry) to install all of the other updates as one set. This does require a few reboots but all the updates do get applied successfully.
If like me you tend to update several machines at the same time and start off an update on one machine before starting it in another etc., before returning to the first machine, it is easy to miss he failure message which doesn't stay on the screen for very long. The first one notices is when the machines require updates to be applied a second or possibly a third time. Very annoying.