This is very strange. For some reason, I can read and write files on the linux file server I have set up, but I can no longer delete files if I am connected with a Windows machine. This server has been running great for 2 years at least. Just now it has become a problem. If I log on with my Mac laptop (using the SMB system), I have no problem. I just did an entire hard drive dump on my Windows machine and even right after the reinstall of Windows, I got the same problem. Any ideas?

The first thing that comes to mind is that your samba login name (and password) from the Windows machine have changed. Or you are logged in as a different user on the Windows machine resulting in a different login name for the samba server.

Especially the name and password might have been changed.

Depending on the set-up of samba this may result in a read-only access, or in no access at all.

That's true, but this started to occur BEFORE I reformatted the machine and continued after I did so. Nothing has changed at all with Samba. But what I should mention is I was screwing around with Apache and I changed the mountpoint for my file sharing drive from /home/me/D to /mnt/D. But I did make the proper modifications in the smb.conf and the fstab files. Besides, it works fine with my Mac, but the 2 windows computers don't work anymore. Both started at the same time. And the other Windows computer has been having no problems at all. This all started after I reinstalled Apache..but not right away. I installed Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 and was able to save ONE TIME to the server, then deleted the file I just saved. When I went back to it to save again, it gave me the permissions error. That was when I reformatted expecting it to get better, but it didn't. Then I went upstairs to the other Windows machine and got the same error.

EDIT: I just thought of something. I set up the "Check-In, Check Out" option with Dreamweaver. For you who do not know what that is, it doesn't allow you to edit or delete files if it is being accessed by another instance of Dreamweaver (or any program probably). I wonder if setting that up caused the problem. It was right after I installed Dreamweaver did I notice this issue.

Do you have the same problems with files that have nothing to do with Dreamweaver?

If it is a file lock problem: the samba web interface swat should list any active file locks which may prevent rewriting/deleting a file.

Perhaps a restart of the samba server will help. (Make sure none of your machines has any files open via samba).

Yes, I have the problem with every file using every means of accessing the server. I have done more than just restarting Samba, I've rebooted the entire machine a few times.