So I am reinstalling several laptops with a clean install of Windows 7, using the win 7 pro 64 sp1 iso supplied by Microsoft for our bulk licensing arrangement.
Late last year I installed multiple systems using the same iso image, the same license keys, on the same laptops, using the same Internet connection. in all earlier attempts, I was able to get through the updates in a day and a half at the most, less if I was paying attention and pushing the systems along.
Now I get nothing. The system will do one update, "windows update agent 7.6.7600.320". Then it stops doing anything. Even after days of waiting, I get NOTHING. Windows update does not appear to be locked up, and there does not appear to be any memory leak, I never use more than 75% of the memory.
I've run every "fix-it" troubleshooter, and tried every solution posted elsewhere.
I keep running into articles talking about letting it spin for 24 to 48 hours... I gave several systems 72 hours, and got nothing.
One of our IT guys gave me several kb's to look at, but all of them refuse to install, probably because they have a prerequisites in the 201 missing updates. The ones that don't refuse to install all fail because they launch a wu job, that just spins forever doing nothing, so downloading the KB updates directly doesn't actually do anything, other than run windows update, which will not run.
There are no viruses, these are clean installations directly from microsoft provided media onto fresh hard drives, onto more than one model of machine previously known to work flawlessly (dell laptops in good working order and shipped with win7).
The only answer I can find is that recently microsoft has changed the update process, so I should give it 24 to 48 hours to run. Been there, done that. Is a fresh install of windows 7 no longer being supported?