Windows 8 problems updating and install

Asus Ultrabook running Win8 with Intel I5 processor and 6GB of RAM.  Most installs don’t work. Windows update fails with error code 800703F1.  I tried to install Acronis Backup software. That install fails also.  I successfully installed a new version of Adobe Flash player and some Windows update optional updates.  For instance I installed a new Intel graphics driver that was part of Windows update.  But no critical updates will install.  

When I try to refresh the settings I get: “There was a problem refreshing your computer, no changes were made.”  I also tried this using a Win8 boot disk with the same results.

SFC /scannow comes back saying “Windows resource protection could not perform the requested operation.”  I tried this in safe mode also.

I ran chkdsk /r.  That didn’t solve the problem.
I tried to update to Windows 8.1 but that fails.  

I ran trend micro housecall and Kaspersky anti-rootkit. Everything came up clean. The customers antivirus-anti-malware is Webroot. A scan with that came up clean.  

I am able to change some systems settings.  For instance I went into Advanced System Settings and changed startup and recovery settings to turn off automatic system restart on failure and changed the dump type to small memory dump.

Short of a clean install what can I try?

Thanks,
Al