Another thought:
If it stays working without madexcept.
madexcept by default catches exceptions in the ide.
Maybe turn this off tools/madexcept/configuration
In the VM:
[Fiddler] The connection to ‘installers.embarcadero.com’ failed.
Error: TimedOut (0x274c).
System.Net.Sockets.SocketException A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond 204.216.225.180:80
Out of the VM, “took too long to respond”
Still working without madExcept BUT with Fiddler … closing Fiddler for a while
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My (Berlin) maybe has a file called updatecheck.exe in the bin folder, currently missing.
(Don’t remember removing it…)
If you have this or similar file maybe you could put it into another folder, and see if that does anything. (Better or worse)
It seems likely Embarcadero during their server upgrade/migration have forgotten and/or discarded the update server used by the update check in seattle.
Apart from previous possibility, not sure how you get delphi to stop checking for updates. Does this delphi have all available patches on it?
Also is this the actual fault causing delphi to fail,
Delphi likely also does license checks, do they fail in a similar manner?
Ok, current state of play:
Earlier on I had copied my active VM (“VM 1”), which was running Seattle and which was failing registration validation, to “VM 2”.
I then uninstalled Seattle on VM 2, “scrubbed” it as mentioned above, then downloaded, installed and registered 10.4 CE. I set up Delphi (library paths, my components, 3rd) to run my programs, other than the big legacy one. This worked and continues to do (touch wood 
)
Then it was back to the saga unfolding on VM 1. Embarcadero was still insisting it was a configuration problem with f-secure (not installed here).
As suggested above, I uninstalled Seattle, scrubbed it, and with the benefit of just having done it set up and configured Seattle. First thing to go in was madExcept … and Delphi was back to closing … uninstalled madExcept, installed everything else and Delphi worked.
Installed madExcept and Delphi kept working (nothing unusual about that I thought, I am just going mad).
So … Seattle continues to work after at least a day of just letting it run, doing the occasional build, etc. And I patched my legacy program to not use a few 3rd party tools, and it is now running enough for me to refer back if I need to.
10.4 CE also is ok.
Puff … puff…
Puzzles?
Why did it fail when I installed madExcept, then work … then continue to work (not chasing this … )
Why is 10.4 called Sydney?
Why isn’t it called Convoy (10 4 good buddy, you got you ears on, come on).
Thanks for all the help guys
Ken
No updatecheck file here that I can find
My Seattle would have had all patches … but after uninstalling and scrubbing, I reinstalled using a Seattle setup I had, so probably not all patches.
As to what was causing Delphi to fail, not sure, think I only started using Fiddler after Delphi started working.
Not sure about licence checks … when it loads it says Professional and Registered
10.4 CE does not seem to go to installers.embarcadero.com.
It does go to versign.com … and that gets a 502 error??? No other errors found.
Just a thought: how are you installing Delphi? Back in the day when I still was using c++ builder to target android, installing with the web installer would often result in a corrupted configuration
Thanks for the reply
" I reinstalled using a Seattle setup I had" so a local exe not web.