Got used laptop, cannot update it

[Damian.Byrne]

So, today I got a used laptop I bought off of Ebay. It's a Lenovo Thinkpad T400s.

Specs are

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo P9600, Dual core @ 2.53GHz

RAM: 4GB

GPU: Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family

Storage Drive: 128GB SSD

Screen: 14" 1440x900

OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

 

It's running fine at the moment. I've installed Linux Mint MATE 17.2 and Kodibuntu as separate operating systems (if you're wondering, for some reason, I couldn't install Kodi 14.2 in Mint, I kept getting 404s for its repositories, so I put in Kodibuntu, which works just fine). I was really surprised that this machine is able to handle 10bit anime encodes just fine in Kodibuntu.

 

When I booted up the machine for the first time today, it was apparent that it had been restored to factory settings, seeing as how it had Internet Explorer 8! Anyhoo, on to  the problem. I simply cannot do Windows Update. I was able to install maybe 2 or 3 updates (among which is IE 11), but now, I can't do anything. At the moment, the machine is checking for updates, and has been for about a half hour. I cannot stop it other than to end the service or reboot the system. 

I have already tried deleting everything in Windows/SoftwareDistribution, but that only made things worse (before, I was able to at least select which updates I wanted, but even when I selected to install only one at a time, it would take literally forever, with the progress bar moving but no actual progress being made, even for upwards of a half hour).

I have tried downloading the updates manually, but those files take forever, with no real progress seeming to be made, even for the small ones.

Within Windows itself, I have not installed anything, other than Internet Explorer 11. I've also checked for malware, by using an Avast USB Rescue Disk I created on a separate machine.

I have also tried rebooting, ending the Update service, deleting the contents of SoftwareDistribution, restarting the Update service, setting Update to run at a certain time and install automatically, but it didn't do anything once that time came and went. I am now having it check for updates, and again, it is taking far longer than it should.

[Emanuel_M]

it's your internet connection

[Damian.Byrne]

it's your internet connection

Can't be. I've tried both wi-fi and ethernet (doing ethernet cable at the moment), and on all my other machines (Win 7 desktop, Kindle Fire tablet, games consoles, Win 8 desktop) my internet connection is working just fine. 

[Emanuel_M]

Can't be. I've tried both wi-fi and ethernet (doing ethernet cable at the moment), and on all my other machines (Win 7 desktop, Kindle Fire tablet, games consoles, Win 8 desktop) my internet connection is working just fine. 

have you tried manual/standalone installers, if applicable for the update?

[Emanuel_M]

try reseting WU 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/971058?wa=wsignin1.0

[Damian.Byrne]

 Okay, I managed to get all my Windows updates. I just had to leave the laptop on overnight. Now however, I have a new problem. I managed to bork my Linux Mint install, so I decided to get rid of that and go with Ubuntu 15.04. I used Universal-USB-Installer 1.9.6.1 on my Windows 7 desktop to prepare an 8GB flash drive as a bootable Ubuntu disk (I had done the same when installing Mint). This worked and now, I'm trying to install Ubuntu but it keeps failing. I'm at the partition table which reads thusly

/dev/sda

 /dev/sda1 ntfs 104MB Windows 7 (loader)  (note, this was there when I got the laptop in the mail)

 /dev/sda2 ntfs 54527MB (note, this is my Windows 7)

 /dev/sda5 ext4 7000MB Ubuntu 15.04 (note, this is my flash drive)

 /dev/sda6 swap 49999MB

 /dev/sda7 swap 16400MB

 

Linux Mint was originally on sda4 I think it was, with sda5 being a 6GB swap. When I booted my Ubuntu flash drive, I pressed the minus button (the one beside change) to get rid of the Linux Mint install, having it become free space. I then took that free space, made it an ext4 50GB mount point /, with a 16GB swap. However, when I click on Install Now, it fails. I get an error message that reads "The ext4 file system creation in partition #6 of SCSI1 (0,0,0) failed". When I click back, the 50GB is now for some reason a swap area too.

 

EDIT - I managed to get it installed. I had to select the option to "Reinstall Ubuntu" and somehow that fixed it. Turns out I somehow managed to nuke my Kodibuntu install as well without realizing it.

[Damian.Byrne]

*SIGH*

 

Back again. So, Ubuntu did get installed, but for some reason, it's partition is tiny. I only realized when after a little while, Ubuntu said I was running out of space, to which I scratched my noggin and asked myself "Didn't I give it 50 gigs?" So far, I've just been installing software. So I went into Terminal, used the lsblk command and this came up

sda    119.2G (this is the physical SSD)

->sda1 ntfs 100MB (this is Win 7's recovery partition)

->sda2 ntfs 50.8GB (this is Win 7 itself)

->sda3 (blank)  1K (haven't a clue what this is)

->sda5 swap 46.6GB (I don't think this is mounted)

->sda6 swap 15.3GB (mounted as swap)

->sda7 ext4  6.5GB (mounted as /, this is the Ubuntu install)

sr0  1024MB (I have no idea what this is)

 

So I've got a few more questions - where is sda4? How come it apparently can't format sda5 as ext4, mount point /? Is there any way I can add sda5's capacity to sda7?

 

Here's a photo I took of the drive when I reboot from the flash drive, and use Gparted

I cannot do anything with sda5 or sda6. I'm going to try booting into Windows, deleting the secondary partition there and try installing Ubuntu. EDIT - Okay that worked. I've got a nice big 50 gig partition for Ubuntu.