Iphone software update fails consistently

It seems like every time I try and update either my iPhone 5s or my iPhone 4 to the latest iOS version, I have problems.  Here are my two most recent experiences:
I connected my iPhone 5s to iTunes, and was prompted that a software update was available.  I cancelled, and first ran a "Transfer purchases" update, which finished successfully.  Then I clicked on the Manual Backup button, and watched the progress bar until it hung with no progress.  So, I disconnected the iPhone, exited iTunes, rebooted the computer (Windows 7), and powered the iPhone off and on.  When I re-launched iTunes and plugged the iPhone back in, I was greeted with the message "iTunes cannot read the contents of the iPhone...", from which the only recovery is to restore the iPhone to factory defaults and then restore from the last backup.  Since today's backup was unsuccessful, I will be forced to use a two-month old backup.  Why can't iTunes read the iPhone contents, since it read the contents just fine when I transferred the purchases?
Then I performed a successful iOS update of my iPad Air, which encouraged me.  So, I proceeded to update the iPhone 4.  I transferred purchases successfully, and completed a manual backup successfully.  I then clicked on the Update button, the software update was downloaded successfully, but when it went to install the software on the iPhone, I received the error that the software update could not proceed because of an "unknown error".  Of course, the iPhone 4 then needed to be restored to factory defaults.
Why am I having so many issues with iPhone software updates?

And to make matters worse, when I go to restore the iPhone4 from the backup that I created a few minutes ago, iTunes says it can't use this backup because it is corrupt.  And iTunes seems to have deleted any previous backups of this device--why would it do that?  So now I need to re-build this iPhone as if it were a new device.  Very frustrating.

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