First Time Build Networking issues

[Otal]

Hello, yesterday I built my first pc. Took me roughly 6 hours to become aquanted with its inner workings and got the Os installed and the graphics drivers and the motherboard drivers. Here is the build:
Case: Cooler Master CM Storm Stryker ATX Full Tower Case Black & White 9X5.25 8X3.5INT 13X2.5INT USB3.0
PSu: 750 Watt Bronze Power EVGA
MoBo: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-D3H
Processor: Intel i5 4670k
G-Card: EVGA Nvidia Geforce 760 GTX
Drives: 2TB Seagate & 120G Kingston SSD

These are the main components to my understanding, atleast for this troubpe shooting. 

The Problem: The computer will not connect to the internet, it dosent recognize any network actually and gives no opportunity to even connect to one. When I go to the Device Manager screen theres no Network adapters listed at all even though the board comes with onboard ethernet. Iv checked several forums and downloaded the drivers for the adapters onto a stick ( LAN 8 ) when I attempted to load the drivers up it notified me that there are no recognizable adapters. Did I hook something up wrong? Missing a cable on the MoBo? Faulty MoBo? Hidden Bios option for networking thats been disabled?

Im really stuck here and have been combing the internet for a solution, unfortionatly im very inexperienced and its been a number of years since iv been out of school for electronics engineering, I desperatly need some assistance as I have exhausted all ideas and im sure google is tired of my misinterpreted searches. Please Help :, (

[absic]

Hi there,

What Operating System are you running?

There are two little lights either side of the LAN port on the I/O backplate, do either of these light up when you power on the system?

Check the BIOS under Integrated Peripherals and make sure that the LAN option hasn't been disabled.

[Otal]

My operating system is Windows 7 Ultimate, I checked the bios, the LAN is enabled, the lights you speak of do not show when the cord is plugged into its respected slot. 

[Otal]

An Update: No signal lights around the ethernet cord, I played around further in the Bios... I enabled the onboard LAN, changed the boot cycle from UEFI & Legacy to Legacy Only and the 3rd option UEFI only which changed some settings but fixed nothing, I took out the mobo battery to reset the mem, I have a flash drive with the new correct realtek ethernet drivers but when i run the install for the drives it says that the adapter is in deep sleep mode, I tryed looking for the adapter listed in the device manager but there was no category for it to enable it if it was disabled. I think at this point im just going to uninstall everything and reinstall it again. If I get nowhere with that I think ill have to replace the board.