Errors when changing Permalink style

I installed wordpress on a virtual machine in my local network, for configuring a website before uploading it to my host. One issue that I’m running into is with the Permalink settings.

If I have them set to the default of servername/?page=1 (or whatever number is assigned), everything works fine. However, if I change it to anything else, then my pages stop loading (can’t find page errors). It converts my pages from the ?page=xx to “about-us” or “whateverpagename”, but going to servername/about-us/ produces an error (404).

To clarify: If my “About” page is page 3, then setting the permalink to the default setting and going to servername/?page=3 works. However if I set permalinks to anything else (which changes the page url from ?page=3 to about-us/) causes everything to break. Going to servername/about-us/ fails to load.

I’ve tried this with multiple reinstallations of wordpress, and still have this issue. Any advice on what to do to fix this (or requests for more information to troubleshoot the issue) are greatly appreciated.

Thanks, and have a great day:)
Patrick.

P.S. Also to clarify my intentions, I’m going to create the site on my local machine, and then recreate it on my hosted provider after I have everything configured there.