After reboot new desktop cannot browse, DNS works

You say that they live in a senior living community.  If the community is sharing an internet feed amongst all the people there, I suspect that you have have an IP address conflict.

Try this

Turn off the router

Take a cable directly from the desktop or laptop and plug it into the wall outlet
goto a cmd prompt  

In the dos box type the following:


ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
ipconfig

Note the IP address after the last command

If it starts with 10.  or 172.  or 168.  then the community is behind their own router

Note the Gateway address  it usually ends with .1 or .254  

Say the Ip address is 192.168.0.123  with a gateway of 192.168.0.1

Now plug the Desktop / Laptop back into the your router  either via cable or over the wireless

Go to a cmd prompt and again do the
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
ipconfig

if the gateway is in the same subnet (if the first three octets are the same say

192.168.0.xxx

Then your router is confused.  The internet subnet on your router MUST be on a different subnet than the External subnet.

If this is the case you have two choices. Reconfigure the internal IP of your router to something different say 192.168.4.1  or change the router mode to AP.  It's a lot easier to change the Internal IP

Then restart the Router and the PC  and you should be fine

Be shure that your cable is ok. Try connect with your mobile device on this wifi router. If you pass to Internet, it could be cable issue.

Just be sure that your network interface is in dhcp mode.

Right click on binterface icon (bottom right) > Open network and sharing center > (check if you have "Work Network" under active network ) > click on Local Area Connection > click on details.

What do you see?

-Change your DNS settings on the local IPv4 settings on the PC to 8.8.8.8 temporarily (google's DNS) just to triple check that.

-Go to your internet options > Connections tab > Lan Settings....Is it using any proxy settings? Clear them out if so...unless you are using a proxy on the router

-Do you have a laptop that you can try plugging into the router? If it works, that means it's a PC issue and not a router issue.

-Maybe try a simple disable and re-enable of the network card.

Let me know if any of this helps, if not after trying some of those we can further look at our options.

do you see the light flashing next to the connector?  that show you havea contact with the network

Oddly, enough, the problem turned out to be the desktop's system clock. I didn't think to check it because I had set it correctly during the initial setup. Anyway, for some reason, the clock in the systray was way off and when I reset it. the problem went away. Go figure!

I've requested that this question be closed as follows:

Accepted answer: 0 points for PCGenieLA's comment #a39980301

for the following reason:

I found the answer by chance myself.

Good suggestion. I guess even though this is a new computer, straight out of box, it could be stale inventory.

post results!

I wonder why as you said - the old computer didn't work either?

i 'd like to know the solution as well