To Tim in Australia:
That must be it. The machine I was retiring (see the other thread) was indeed the Master Browser. The replacement machine and the laptop both accepted it in that role.
And after I retired the machine, neither of the other machines could browse.
After awhile, they would see the Windows machine. Which does not run all the time, by the way, but I will address that in another thread.
Anyway: after several hours of running the replacement machine and the laptop, and correcting the configuration file and service-start instructions on both, they seem to have settled on a regular Master Browser. Hosts come up very quickly, without delay.
With that said: you mentioned installing Network File System in a Windows environment. (Mine's Windows 8.1.) I'd like to know how to get NFS to run between two Linux boxes. That would be a start. Then I could think about installing an NFS service and configurator on the Windows machine.
Temlakos