Hi Buck,
Welcome to the community.
Did you try to re-install vmware tools in your windows 8.1?
ARBuck wrote:
Also, if I browse to Network in Explorer, vmware-host shows up there but trying to open it gives me the error "Windows cannot access \\vmware-host."
I think you should turn on windows Network Discovery if you want to browse vmware-host in Network place.
You could enable this by
Control Panel -> Network and Internet -> Network and Sharing Center -> Advanced sharing settings