Windows 7 - Brand new HP6241f, Win7, can surf but not install

We received two brand new HP6241f PCs running Windows 7 from Future Shop here in Canada.
I got home tonight from work and found my Dad still sitting in front of the first, trying to get it set up. At that point he was trying to activate the 60-day MS Office trial but every time he clicked the link to get a key he'd get a message saying he wasn't connected to the Internet. I confirmed that he was; we can totally surf.

I found another way of getting the key but kept getting redirected to a Bing page that said "We are unable to find [URL]."

I tried a few times, figured it was a bad link and decided to move on. I went to download Windows Live Mail.

Same stupid thing. The download page would load, the download would be about to begin and the redirect would happen again.

I've tried downloading Firefox and CCleaner - same problem.

I've browsed forum after forum and answer after answer. There's only one user and she's identified as administrator.

I played with security settings up the yin/yang. I do Hi-Speed Internet technical support for a living so I can easily disable common stuff. I followed some instructions to make changes of the User Controls but Full Control is already enabled.

I'm at my wits end and hating Windows 7. There are too damn many security options, if you ask me. Too many to find, apparently, because nothing I've done is working.

Please help; we've still got a second PC to open up.

Thanks for your patience.

HP PCs would probably mean a lot of factory installed apps and factory-determined configurations----much of which you may not need or want.

Do you reject out of hand the idea of doing a clean install on both of these PCs?

If you might consider it, what discs were contained in the package that might help you do that?

If you were to do that, make recovery CDs so that you can restore both PCs to original factory configuration if needed--possibly for warranty purposes?

There may well be a fix for your issues, but in your shoes I would cut my losses primarily to avoid this type of issue--the thing wasn't configured the way you want it and the easiest way to get it that way may be to start from the ground up.

That's my first idea. Others may well have troubleshooting ideas on your specific problem.

Take my word for it: Win 7 is probably the best MS consumer level OS ever, but you may be shielded from that completely if you have to deal with pre-built PCs.

Are you choosing to use Bing at all? Is it set as a default search tool?

Redirects would have me spooked, but tough to evaluate without more details. Is anti virus/anti spyware up and running?

I checked for all the stuff that could have come with the PC to see which ones could be causing the issue. We not only removed the Norton-related material, I ran a tool we use at work to ensure every last bit of Norton was gone.

This morning we did a system restore to put the Norton back just to make sure that hadn't made the problem worse. Same thing happened; the download would just about begin and we'd get redirected.

The machine is right out of the box; there is no other restore we can do.

Bing had been set as the default search tool; I changed it to Google. There was a Bing toolbar; I removed it. There was an AVG toolbar, I removed it. Nothing made a difference.

I checked the Windows firewall; it was fine as far as I can see. The Windows 7 way of structuring allowed programs is a little bit insane and all I could tell was that nothing was blocked, really.

No other firewalls after my removals.