Windows update had a similar message when I installed a Crucial M500 drive on Win7 Pro on an lenovo X200 tablet, and crucial solved it by having me delete the driver for the disk controller. Windows update worked again after I rebooted twice and let windows install its own driver.
That disk caused daily BSODs, so I threw out the (new) crucial M500 and clean installed a X25-M on my X200 tablet. The X25-M did not suffer from the failed windows update problem, but SMART showed that every shutdown of that drive was unsafe, so it also went into the garbage after considerable headbanging.
So I bought an Intel S3500 drive. The unsafe shutdowns went away, but again Windows update gives the error "Windows update cannot check for updates because the service is not running." Other symptoms are: sfc /scannow gives a few errors. (This also happened when the crucial drive was acting up on me. It went away when I uninstalled that drive.) Also, in the Win7 event viewer I see many many ongoing errors of many types coming from windows search service.
This problem with Windows update has therefore appeared upon installation of at least 3 SSDs of various types, and two of the three I tried with my X200 tablet. Blaming the operating system is not helpful. We need instructions of how to install an SSD into an actual computer that people actually use. Preferably Intel should issue a utility that automatically finds such issues and fixes them. This windows update problem is especially annoying, because the first time I encountered it I assumed a virus was at fault and wasted a whole day on a clean install, only to realize that the problem came from the SSD. My lenovo is mostly Intel inside, including the disk controller. That's why I went for an intel SSD when the crucial drive turned out not to be compatible. Everything should just work, I shouldn't have to toss intel drives because they aren't compatible with intel chips running the most common operating system.