With a fresh Windows 7 (SP1) installation there is a chance it won’t be able to update on it’s own.
This is because some essential updates, that are used for Windows Update, are missing.
Symptoms: endless searching for updates, error while searching for updates
There is a community made update package that will install all of the updates that are missing for a good Windows experience.
You can download this package on this website http://update7.simplix.info/
The website itself is in Russian. You can use google translate (or an other webpage translator) to change the language to English. The package download is just at the top “Загрузите UpdatePack7R2”. The package gets updated regulary so I won’t post a direct download link for the package.
This package has a lot of updates and will install only those who are not already installed. It will reboot your computer a few times to install updates before proceding. All you can do is wait. After everything is installed, your Windows update should work again. Your PC will be almost up-to-date when the package is ready installing, so you won’t have to install a lot of updates through Windows update.