There are so many pitfalls that no one can predict what may happen.
But your story is not new. It could be caused by so many things that I would be heading to the gambling tables if I guessed it.
-> However I find that unplugging USB drives and printers to sometimes help as well as leaving my passwords on the machine blank.
-> The other thing is to create a new backup administrator account and let the updates run on that.
There is no story about you installing an antivirus so it's unlikely it's that issue.
I have a Windows 7 computer (HP) that I've restored with a fresh install of Windows 7 numerous times using a Windows 7 partition. I recently received my Windows 10 upgrade invitation &, since my computer was running slowly, I decided to reinstall Windows 7 before upgrading to Windows 10. After reinstalling Windows 7, I went to work installing the hours of updates. (I purchased the computer in 2011, & thus the version of Windows 7 on the partition is from 2011.) After about the 4th series of updates, Windows became stuck in a loop - it would search for updates endlessly, never find any, & just continue searching in the background, while my computer slowed to a crawl. So I began searching online for resolutions &, although I found numerous troubleshooting tips from others who had a similar experience & tried them all, after 8 hours without success I decided to give up & instead call Mcrosoft tech support. The first Microsoft support rep took control of my computer remotely & repeated many of the troubleshooting steps I had attempted 2 days prior, to no avail. So he transferred my case to a senior engineer & made an appointment to work with that engineer. The senior engineer called me 2 days later & attempted to install Windows 10 immeduately, prior to fixing the Windows 7 update issue. I explained to him that I had already attempted this & that it didn't work. He insisted he could install Windiws 10 &, 2 hours later, he realized he could not. He then attempted to install Windows 7 updates (which, again, I had attempted numerous times after attempting numerous fixes, only to find that the updating process reached a point where if began searching for updates endlessly, without finding any). Again, I explained to him that I'd already done this & the updates have failed every time. After 3 hours of installing updates, my computer entered an endless rebooting cycle, as it began uninstalling the updates it had just installed. The senior engineer called me back 4 hours later & I explained to him that the computer was now uninstalling the very updates it had just installed, & it was rebooting over & over again. He told me to just allow it to reboot & that someone would call me back in a couple of days. Well, my computer has been running, & rebooting, for 20 hours, & I am beginning to wonder whether this will ever end. More importantly, I'm wondering whether ANYONE at Microsoft knows what they are doing. The tech support people seem utterly clueless. I've now been without my computer for 5 days & I'm not even close to getting this problem resolved. I'm not even sure I want to run ANY version of Windows anymore. I'm wondering whether anyone can help me. After rebooting, my computer shows a black screen that says "Applying update operation X of X (registry/machine/components/...), where X is a number, & then moves to a blue screen that first says "Stage 3 of 3, Preparing to Configure Windows, Do not shut off your computer" & then almost immediately moves to a screen that says "Stage 3 of 3, Failure Confuguring Windows Updates, Reverting Changes, Do not shut off your computer", after which the computer shuts down & then restarts this entire process over again. It's been doing this for 20 hours, & I highly doubt that it's going to reach an end stage. I feel I should shut off my computer, but the engineer told me that this would do no good since the process will just restart once I start up my computer again. I should also note that I've noticed that the numbers in the first step are some of the same numbers I saw yesterday, suggesting that the same updates are being uninstalled & then reinstalled, over & over again. This sounds similar to the problem Micosoft had with a Windows 10 update. Any assistance would be appreciated. Thank you!