Hi all: Thanks again for all of the suggestions ... I wanted to update this thread with my "solution". Unfortunately, nothing worked (and I did try all of the above suggestions including disabling selective suspend for all possible devices). So I finally caved and, like bjarteao, connected...
Thanks for the reply, MasterChief. I don't think it's a "100% cpu" issue but I'm not sure. Will try to keep an eye on that.
Interesting regarding your "master browser" suggestion ... I will also take a look at that.
I also wonder if it may be related to "selective suspend" being enabled. I...
bjarteao, did you ever figure this out? I'm having the same problem. Windows 8.1 computer disappearing from the network (of mostly windows 7 and Vista computers) after anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. Disabling power saving had no effect. Rebooting fixes the issue (temporarily).