I am having the same problem as of 1/2/14. As a novice I am just hunting around for a work-around.

I've never heard of this before. I'd love to figure out what's going on.

dkb89 - Designer Portfolio is no longer available in the marketplace, so that could be the issue with that one. I don't see any reason by the GroupDocs one would error. Are you having trouble with any others? Could you get me a screenshot of that error?

lozols - What add-ons are causing this problem for you?

Also, where are your sites hosted?

I had similar problem upgrading Cube Testimonials - 2 other upgrade worked fine, but Cube Testimonials displayed this error (and appears to now prevent me from adding _any_ blocks to the site). Trying to upgrade again displays the message '1' in the status bar.