I am trying to set up samba on my Red hat 8 box, i am aware that i must change the line disable = no in the /etc/xinetd.d/swat file, but it doesn't exist on my computer, although i have samba installed (checked by running rpm -qa | grep samba)

I then searched for the file on the internet and found that it looked like this

service swat
{
port = 901
socket_type = stream
wait = no
only_from = 127.0.0.1
user = root
server = /usr/sbin/swat
log_on_failure += USERID
# disable = no
}
and after creating this file in vi and restarting the start up script i still get "the connection was refused when attempting to contact 127.0.0.1:901

Why??

You have to install an extra rpm for samba-swat for that !!!!

What's it called and where do i get it from?

SWAT is located on your RedHat CDs.
The file name is samba-swat-2.2.7-5.8.0