I am having problems trying to get the ESS configured with the Ethernet connection and loading the ESS plugin.
1. I d/led the ESS plugin from Warp9 . It comes as a zipped file.  It unzips ok but is a m3p file and when I click on it, it does not expand and go into the pluging directory. For some dumb reason  Win 8.1 think it is a video. So I tried a work around buy expanding it and then copying the dll file to the plugin folder. But when I load Mach3 it tells be that the DLL is defective and to reload. I cannot figure out why win8.1 doesn't open the ess plugin and copy it to the plugin directory. Is there another way around this problem?
The second problem may be related to the first problem. I d/led and install the win7 shell that greg recommends. With the ESS connected to the laptop rj45 connector and I try to set up network sharing it looks ok in that I have the ip4  address as 10.9.9.1 and the subnet mask as 255.255.255.0
But when I look at the network sharing screen it says it isn't connected.
Asus was of no help.
Dan

Well I got win8.1 to work with the ESS and Mach3. I hate win8.1.  But there is one remaining minor problem. When I load mach3 it says the dll is defective and to reload it however, the dll does load and I can see the ESS come on. Any way to fix that minor problem?
Otherwise everything seems to work. I copied the dll from another pc and pasted to the plugin directory. I also went in the security and turned the firewall off.
Dan