Issues with update and upgrading - Core and OS

It looks as if I am having an issue with updating Core and upgrading the Operating System. First time ever in a few years of deployment that I have had this issue.
I first attempted this morning to upgrade the OS from 13.2 to 14.0 and that just sat spinning forever and never upgraded. I decided to reboot the VM to halt that operation.
I then decided to update Core from 2024.10.3 to 2024.12.1. It’s been sitting at over 15 minutes without success.
Both operations in the past have never taken over 5 minutes to complete. I think my HA is busted.
How do I proceed with upgrading and updating? Are there commands via CLI at the console that I can run to complete these operations?
Thanks in advance.

Hi Ed, maybe it can be helpful to share how you virtualised HA.

Are your IP settings (DNS) OK, what are the DNS settings of your router?
Are you using network blocking (Pi-Hole, Adguard) or VLAN’s?
Can you reach https://ghcr.io/home-assistant/ ?

Yes. I use Pi-Hole on my network, but that has never caused an issue in the past few years of using Home Assistant.
I have since changed the DNS settings on the Home Assistant VM and VM host to bypass my Pi-Hole and it looks as if the update and upgrade completed.
Has something changed on the Home Assistant side of things?
Thanks.