I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. As far as I know it’s an issue with a driver installed on the computers, not with anything trying to reach out to an external server. If that were the case you’d expect it to fail to boot any time you don’t have an Internet connection.
Windows is bad but it’s not that bad yet.
I guessed the same, but according to Wikipedia:
I’m not sure how modern anglicisation works but I assume what’s given there is considered the most accurate spelling of the indigenous word. So “wallaby” isn’t too far off.