I have about 30 GB of music that I'm trying to send over the network to my laptop. My desktop is running 64-bit Windows Vista, the laptop running 32-bit Ubuntu 8.04. I shared my user's home folder on my laptop and I have password-protected sharing enabled in Windows on my desktop. When I try to access my desktop from the laptop, the address in the top bar of the GNOME window says that I'm connected to my Windows machine, but there's nothing visible there. I can't see any folders or printers or anything. When I try to access my laptop from Windows, I type in my username and password and I get an error message saying that access is denied. I just want to be able to log into my computers from any other computer by typing in my username and password and then browse my directories as if I were on the other machine. From there, I'll easily be able to copy files between machines. Does someone have idiot-proof step-by-step instructions to make this work?

Hi gamelord12, Have you configured the samba server? How about added smb users? If those two are set up properly this may be the problem.
Good luck. ;-)

Okay, I followed those steps, and nothing's changed. Keep in mind that I'm pretty new to all things Unix, so don't expect me to know anything about Samba.

It's likely you need to set up Samba properly. You can read here. That is specific to Ubuntu. If you'd like to know more about Samba in general you can read here.
Good luck. ;-)