Microsoft office home and student

I have a brand new installation of Widows 7 sp1 (literally nothing else has been installed since the OS from disc) on a Dell Latitude D630 (older laptop). I m having a curious problem that Windows updateisnot completing the Checking for Updates step. It just sits and spins for hours. I have a good network connection to the internet, and other machines here are successfully updating. I ve tried rebooting a starting in safe mode. Also, I have tried the Fixit Here: m/en-us/windows/troubleshoot-problems-installing-updates#1TCwindows-7 and also u, but that also stalled.