I recently had to install Windows XP on an old Dell desktop. For some weird reason, even with different Windows XP CDs, while XP was installed fine, it could not get Windows updates. It was running IE 8 with Service Pack 3. As such, it should be up-to-date enough for Microsoft Windows Update to work, but it stubbornly would not. The Internet connection is fine. I even install .Net Framework 2 as recommended by some of the troubleshooting sites.
I finally gave up and decided to risk it with Windows 7 32bit. The problem was the computer does not have a DVD drive to run the Windows 7 installation DVD. I had a USB external DVD drive but the machine could not boot from an external optical drive. However, XP can read from it. Using this connection, I copied over all of the installation files from the Windows 7 DVD onto a second partition on the harddrive and simply run the installer file. It worked. The Dell now has Windows 7. Windows 7 offered me to do an upgrade from XP, but I told it start from scratch. It installed a fresh copy of Windows 7, saving the old files including XP itself, in a folder called Windows.old. I used Windows 7 built-in Disk Cleanup to remove this Windows.old folder.
The point of this experience is you do not need to install Windows 7 directly from the DVD disc. Yes, Windows 7 can do Windows Update just fine.
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