LinuxQuestions.org - SAMBA: Too many files open causing error

(this is at work)
I am running Samba 3.0 on Redhat 9 on a PIII 500

My client machine is a win2k pro
I have the machine up and running, with domain... user access.... shared dirs... everything is OK

But, I moved the database to be held on the linux machine's hard drive
... and directory called /server
I have read/write permissions, and have tested it, and my user owns the directory as well as files.

If i use a non-relational file, everything is fine... read write, save, close.

I open my database program, and it gets open about 20 files.
Then it crashes my windows machine for about 5 minutes and says that "the information on \Device\......blah blah.....\filename.db can not be accessed. The information is lost"
then the program continues to hang until i close it with taskmgr.

I look at the linux box, and samba is still running
under "smbstatus" i have each of the files listed that opened properly, followed by my username and LOCKED.... so i guess samba still thinks it is open... but the files go away after about 10 more minutes and smb works properly.

My question:
Is there a certain number of files that I am allowed to open?
am I just opening too many?
I have almost 100 files for a total of 250+mb

I appreciate any help i am given.
If i need to post more info, let me know