Clean install/Can't get IE 8 to update!

Hi,
You or at least I have to think there is something going on with the hdd :/
How old is it ?

Acer Aspire One ZG5 Manufactured Date: 0810 (August 2010?)

Not that bad. I did an W7 clean install earlier in the year for some friends on an 8 to 9 year old Gateway (had a box with the cow markings) that had XP. Their son installed a DreamSpark W7 Ultimate while he was in college, and the license expired. The parents did not know it was a DreamSpark. After the sparks flew, , the parents called me and I came to the rescue and installed W7 Pro. The thing is still going strong, and parents as well as son are happy.

Hi,
Are using wired internet or wireless ?
Did you manually install all the drivers first before installing the 2 or 3 updates and connecting to the internet ?
Sounds like you connected to the internet and activated windows well before you attempted to install the 2-3 updates.

Activating windows is not required to being able to manually installing the updates.
It is preferred to install the updates before connecting to the internet.

Wireless.

Looked at Device Manage, and everything seemed OK. Will look again, when I can.

Activating the OS was among the first things I did. Somehow got pounded into my old head many years ago that an OS that does not activate does not play well with Windows Update.

How can one install the Updates without connecting to the Internet? Don't they need to download from somewhere in the sky to the PC?

Hi,
Usually one would have the required updates on a flash drive ready to go = see my OneDrive :)

You'd also want to have the wifi driver in advance.

Checked Device Manager once again, and tried to update the wireless, video, and a couple other drivers. In all cases, after Windows did its search, it came back with the statement that the latest driver is already installed.

Also went to Acer, and the PC has the same version of the wireless driver as Acer has in their download for Windows 7.

What made the difference IMO, is that IE 8 was on the computer from the clean install. Finally found the IE 10 offline download, and it took. IE 9, IE 10, and IE 11 previously got rejected, but they were not the offline version.

After IE10 was on the computer, the Windows Updates worked. Actually, the Updates upgraded IE 10 to IE 11!

So, as it stands right now, Windows 7 Starter is doing fine.

Going to keep this Acer for a few more days to make sure there are no problems.

Thanks for hanging in there with me, TZ! I do appreciate your help.

Have a great week!

Hi,
No problem
I have in the past hid the ie11 update and after that installed ie9 first which both ie9 and 10 will appear after hiding ie11.
Of course I still manually installed a couple update to get a functional updates search going it has been the biggest issue faced

Ie11 has for others installed okay for others though through the update system so not sure what is up with that quirk