Vista - I can't update, : Fresh vista installation.

This is a 1 yr old gateway laptop: 3 gigs. Huge. Worked great, then got all stupid.

Fresh vista factory recovery from recovery drive and all looks well except 2 things:

1. Never has updated
2. Hangs on logoff every time. (Except in safemode: No hang.)

I did manage to get the service pack 1 in and it's happy. But no other updates have been made.

I click windows update or use one of the online stand alone updaters, and it goes into searching for update mode and just stays there until I cntr alt del it. I've left it for hours, but it just stays there.

I also used the 3 supposed repair methods on here. The first isn't published, the second said I already had update installed, and the third, registering by hand, finished but I still couldn't update after restart.

I've done all this with Norton Security temporarily off, and I've tried it in safemode.

If anyone can tell me step by step how to produce a log, I'd love to post it here.

At this point, I have the puter re-built and I don't want to do another fresh vista install.

Anyone have any ideas?