Did you turn off the firewall Moribund?

No didn't want to risk that really as I need the firewall running. but I see that it is a sensible test

Will try later (at work for the moment) and try the ping then.

thanks

Success! at least I know I have samba configured correctly.
Stopped the firewall and hey presto! can ping both ways and access the home directories on my linux box from the client machines.

weird thing is I've now lost the internet not even any lights on my modem.

Thanks everyone who helped me out here.

I had a similar situation, where a wxp laptop could see the linux system but not connect to it. Likewise in the inverse, though a connexion could be established using the IP address of the laptop from the Linux System.

This was eventually traced to a firewall configuration issue and nothing to do with wxp or Samba. I have Shorewall installed (standard (maybe ?) with Mandrake 9.1). As the machine running the firewall acts as a gateway to a cable modem, it requires entries in the firewall to enable its own communications to the machines on the LAN.

Packets should be accepted from the fw zone for internal LAN connected machines.

If you use Shorewall, try this (which opens the ports used by smb and and nmbd).

for the Linux machine to access the laptop .. use ...
ACCEPT fw loc tcp 137,138,139 -
ACCEPT fw loc udp 137,138,139 -

for the laptop to access the Linux machine ... add ports 137,138,139 to the existing entriesfor loc to fw
ACCEPT loc fw tcp 80,443,22,20,21,53,137,138,139 -
ACCEPT loc fw udp 53,137,138,139 -

I guess the problem is with the permissions.

The xp user should also be the user on Samba and should have permission to read the contents on the workgroup.

If you plan to use Samba as the Domain server then there is a registry hack which you will need to apply on the XP machine.