I just went to settings, location services, and unchecked use wireless networks and that seems to fix the error message as long as the screens on.
However, once the screen times out and i click it back on I get disconnected from wifi again with the what the hell message.
So to solve that I went to settings, display, screen timeout and changed that to 10min.. now as long as the screen stays on i stay connected with no error
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Sprint, Samsung galaxy S3 with Jellybean
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*Heres an update. I installed SuperSU which overrides superuser for wifi tether. Now when my screen times out my connection remains in tact. Of course, I also still have "use wireless networks" unchecked in my settings..
And for those of you who don't want to use SuperSU instead of Superuser then I recommend installing a program called caffeine which makes your phone stay on all the time when activated with an option to keep your screen on all the time while plugged in only.