Fresh install - is what I do every so often. There are a plethora of how to guesses, on what to do, most of them don't work.

I have spent tens of hours in a past trying to get this issue on several friends machines when doing a fresh reinstall of windows 7, a total nightmare almost every time when Windows update just gets stuck and in some cases takes forever and ever and ever. This is especially true on older laptops with 4gb of Ram or less.

But for the mere mortals, I figure I'd share a few simple steps here:

1. Clean install Win 7
2. Download & Install Service pack 1 manually - SP1(restart)
3. Download(but do not install yet) the following 3 patches based on x86 or x64 architecture of the windows you are trying to install:

Windows6.1-KB3102810
Windows6.1-KB3135445
Windows6.1-KB3138612

4. Disable windows updates completely in control panel.
5. Restart your computer.

Important: Disable internet connection at this point.

6. Install 3 patches from the step 3, make sure to reboot every time.

Once all installed and done, re-enable your internet connection and manually check for updates. Should take 10-15 minutes for the list to come up. Then off we go to download and install 160+ updates.

Should be all peachy at this point.

Hope this saves someone some time on a next reinstall.