Windows 7 pro 64-bit unable to connect to network

Reepca

Honorable
Dec 5, 2012
156
0
10,680
After purchasing a cheap (but much improved) system for my dad for his birthday, and after he finally got a new operating system to go with it, it will not connect to our home network, let alone the internet. Upon clicking on the internet options button at the lower-right portion of the desktop, the only option available was "windstream.net" (our ISP is windstream) (I don't believe the motherboard came with integrated wireless networking), regardless of whether an ethernet cable was plugged in or not. Plugging in an ethernet cable that is directly connected to our router (and that was previously plugged into my computer, which was working fine) causes the internet options button to display "unidentified network, no internet access".

Having ruled out the cable (which we had suspected before), this leaves either the hardware (listed below) or the software (latest BIOS flash, latest realtek internet drivers from MSI's website, and of course windows 7 pro 64-bit).

Motherboard is MSI A88XM-E35
Using an A4-6300 Richland Desktop APU
and 8 GB of G.Skill (2x4) DDR3 RAM.

First I would like to rule out the possibility that it could be a problem caused by his version of windows being windows 7 pro, my version being windows 8 home, and my brother's version being windows 7 home. Is there a major difference in networking between "pro" windows versions and "home" windows versions? On my computer I can simply plug in the exact same cable and it will immediately work. Is that not supposed to happen with windows 7 pro?

I'm worried that the problem might be the motherboard's integrated networking system, which would be a bummer, as it's definitely not covered by newegg's 30-day return/replacement policy any more (dad insisted on not putting computer together until he had windows 7, which took about half a year for him to end up getting).

Thoughts?
 

Reepca

Honorable
Dec 5, 2012
156
0
10,680
It was a faulty motherboard - it's also been having issues with system stability, often restarting (not sleeping, I checked) when running for more than 2 hours at a time. Getting a PCI Network card gave the internet connectivity, but with the stability this bad I'm just going to get him a new motherboard anyway.