Cyclone V Dev Kit - LCD still displays 'not connected' after configuring with different project

I have a Cyclone V GT FPGA Dev Kit (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/programmable/products/boards_and_kits/dev-kits/altera/kit-cyclone-v-gt.html) which comes pre-loaded with the Board Update Portal FPGA image. I do not have an ethernet connection plugged into the board so by default the LCD shows 'not connected'.

I have tried using the USB-Blaster II and the Quartus (V20.1) programmer window to load 2 of the dev kit example projects, the golden_top project and the bts_config project. The programmer window can auto-detect the dev kit and when I attempt to load the .sof files the progress bar goes to 100% (Successful)

However, the LCD still displays 'not connected', presumable because the new projects do not tell the LCD to display anything differently. Could someone help me verify the image was programmed successfully? Is there an easy way to load a program to update the LCD to something else (not the BTS, I am having trouble installing the 32-bit libraries for Quartus V13)? Can anyone explain what the golden_top example project does?