Cannot Update After New HDD Install

A W7 Home Premium SP1 64 bit laptop. The hard drive had started to make occasional clicking noises so I backed everything up, inserted a brand new drive and reinstalled the OS from a disk.

Everything went fine on the install, but at completion I was left with Internet Explorer 8. The first thing I did was to run Windows Update. About 5 hours later I checked it and it was still looking for updates, so I killed the task. I then opened Internet Explorer, got the msg that I was using an old browser along with prompts to download IE11, which I did, successfully. I then retried running the updates and got the same perpetual checking for updates.

I then ran an sfc /scannow, got no integrity violations, and then downloaded and ran the SURT package for my system. I let it run all night, and still got what you see here. I then downloaded and ran the Windows Update Diagnostics hotfix, which gave me nothing.

What do I try next?

I have also run Brink's Reset and Re-register Windows Update Components batch file. It ran without error, but changed nothing.





Update - A couple of things....

• I performed a clean boot and tried to run the SURT again. This time it actually DID something beyond the box 'searching for updates on this computer'. I got the box shown here, indicating that updates are being installed. Eureka! Or so I thought. It never completed. Even after letting it sit for about 12 hours, it refused to finish that last 8% to 10%
• Ever since Windows finished installing with the new drive I've been plagued with high CPU on an svchost task. I've tried killing the task without effect. I've tried letting it alone without effect, thinking that it must be related to the update it's 'trying' to do, and that as soon as the update finishes, the svchost memory drain will disappear. But of course no updates ever complete, so I'm left with the quandary

Unfortunately I don't know how to order attachments, so that latest screen grab shows up as the first. You'd think it would display them in the order added, or that it would allow you to move them around in the topic, but no....
One of the problems I see is that many of the 'Fix It' solutions offered from MS for this type of update problem no longer exist.

Thinking that the difficulty might lie in some Windows 10 nonsense (even though the free update has been long gone) I ran a batch program to keep the system from trying to install W10. I then rebooted and ran the SURT again. This time it completed and said 'Installation Complete'. But what does that mean? If I go back into Windows Update it still tells me that updates were never installed. And the check for updates still just goes on and on and on and on... while svchost is chewing up over 1GB of RAM.

BTW, this laptop has been successfully activated if ANYBODY has that as a stray thought.