Sounds like a messed up NetBIOS name service. Lower the
os level directive in your SAMBA server(s) config files to make sure they
don't become master browsers, then restart all the machines on the network and try again.
A tip: you can use forward slashes with smbclient to save yourself some typing
, i.e. these two commands are equivalents:
smbclient //somename/c$ -U administrator -P
smbclient \\\\somename\\c$ -U administrator -P
Don't worry about this: Micro$oft's Network Neighbourhood system or NetBIOS Name Service (NMB) is one of the most messed up systems I have ever come across. It
never works properly. An easy solution is what I have proposed above: let the Windoze machines maintain the lists of names and IP addresses (this is done automatically and you can't really control this effectively, other than restart the computer). You can do this by lowering the value of the
os level directive in your
smb.conf file.
Also check the latest SAMBA docs, I believe there are some registry patches out there that you should apply to Windoze XP clients before they can play nice with SAMBA.