I received and installed the new Motherboard from Asus and it Fixed all of the problems I was having. Where the ME Version in Advanced Bios once said N/A, it now says ME Version 8.1.40.146. I was able to install the Management Engine Driver without difficulty. The new board also corrected the problem I was having with erratic USB Port performance.
I should also mention that on start up from a power off state, I no longer get the PCI Simple error or the error with the Intel Gigabit Network Connection. I no longer have to restart the computer to get Network/Internet connectivity.
Bruce