Windows 7: Trouble with Windows Update/Group Policy

I have reviewed everyone's posts and at this point i will say that i'm getting fed up with 7. so i'm scrapping it in favor of a custom/clean install. i think the prob was that i drug all of vista's baggage into 7 by upgrading. so right now i'm posting this message from a hewlett packard, and on my asus laptop i'm booted into a ubuntu live cd, busy copying all the files i need from the c drive onto an external terabyte drive. then i'm going to put in the 7 install cd and do a fresh install, free of vista's junk and my progs. i am wondering if that will solve my probs. its not just the fact that i'm unable to update thats bothering me, i've also experienced alot of slowdown ever since upgrading from vista to 7. i'm thinking that the issue could be that vista brought its baggage along with it. also, whenever i get to the ubuntu desktop, it tells me that there are probs with one of the harddrives and that one or both might be failing, although it still lets me access both of them. so i'm thinking that my laptop's internal hd is failing, slowly but surely. in any case, i guess i'll be spending at least part of my christmas repairing this piece of **** instead of relaxing. i should be done with all the major stuff by 6 am, then i'll take a break and put off the rest for a day or 2. i do have one more question though, i cant format the c drive while booted into windows, does anyone know the exact linux commands use to format c drive from within ubuntu? i ask this because i want to blast away each and every little bit of data that my previous 7 install has left behind before doing a clean install.that way i can have a hd that is completely free of any junk whatsoever, at least before the new install. i have also heard about a data wipe method developed by the american department of defense that is specially designed to format/wipe all free space from an hd to the point that any data is completely unrecoverable. does anyone know anything about this? well, where i'm at its about 30 minutes before midnight and i want everyone here to have a great christmas. thanks for any help, reply soon..................................

Enigma, you need to look in a few locations to see if updates have been disabled. You said you had a play in group policy so here's some locations to start and the settings you need to check to make updates available for your login. This should work!

1. gpedit.msc. Go to User Configuration/Admin Templates/Start Menu and Task Bar. Make sure Remove Links and access to Windows Updates is set to 'Not Configured'. This setting is extremely important because it turns on or off the ability to click on the 'Check for Updates' feature. If this setting is enabled you will get the prompt "Windows Update cannot currently check for updates, because updates on this computer are controlled by your system administrator". This is the one causing your problems!

2. gpedit.msc. Go to Computer Configuration/Windows Components/Windows Update and check the setting of the policy Configure automatic updates. This should be set to 'Not configured' for non domain PC's.
With this policy set to 'Enable' it sets the schedule for searching the Windows Update database. This means you would not be able to override this setting unless you were the root administrator. Make sure this is set to 'Not Configured'.

3. gpedit.msc. Go to Computer Configuration/Admin Templates/System/Internet Communication Management/Internet Communication Settings and make sure the policy Turn all access to Windows Update features is set to 'Not Configured'. This setting will allow access to the Windows Update feature via Internet Explorer. You can then access this under the Safety command bar item.

These are the settings we use in our domain environment but you may need to check in either Computer Configuration or User Configuration depending on where you made the changes originally.