Completely new here. Just built a PC with Mandrake 9.1 on it. (Tho that does not mean I know Anything about computers!). It has a LAN card connected to a router ( an all in one box that has a 4 port network switch and adsl modem). The XP machine also is connected to this router. Both machines can connect successfully to the internet.

The router uses DHCP.

The WinXP machine is configured for network sharing, and successfully can share with other Win machines (laptops) perfectly.

The Mandrake machine appears to see the 'Workgroup' and the WinXP machine on that network workgroup when clicking on 'LinNieghborhood' (i.e via K Menu > Network > Remote Access & LinNeighborhood). It displays a 'tree' of 'Localhost' > 'Workgroup' > The WinXP machine.

The WinXP machine has a unique name, and a user name and password, of course.

How on earth do I configure Mandrake 9.1 using KDE 3.1 to enable file and printer sharing. I went into SAMBA CONFIGURATION, from the K Menu, and read the notes there - but to be quite frank all the technical jargon is quite meaningless to me. There must be an easy way of doing it, but I am dammed if I can find it. Spent 4 hours trying to figure it out already. It took no more than 15 minutes to hook some Windows machines together, so please can you help. Ta!

Because you can mount, you probably have samba installed, so your
"file and printer sharing" is enabled.

To configure (add some shares, set domain, etc) samba you need to edit /etc/samba/smb.conf. If it feels too technical (even with the comments), you should check the webmin-samba, swat or gnosamba to have a warm&fuzzy gui to the
same task. I don't know about mandrake, but it might even
have it's own samba configuration tool.

There is a Samba Configuration option in Mandrake9.1, I just cannot figure out how to use it. I am guessing that I may need to gave a name to the Mandrake computer. Obviously I am logged in as a unique user. I don't have to set an I.P. since that is taken care of by DHCP from the router.

I just don't understand how to get the Mandrake to be seen by the WindowsXP machine, or how to get the Mandrake to access the shared files on the WinXP machine.

Please point me in the right direction, within Mandrake, as to which boxes need to be filled in and with what. Ta!

As said, I'm not familiar with mandrake. ;(

But as a general reference you could read the samba howto or its the unofficial counterpart.

Mandrake has had samba mount point in the control centre since 9.0, I'm running 9.2 and it still works the same way. Her is a short overview on how to set a mount point.

From Configuration on the start bar, click on Configure Your Computer, you will have to supply the root password. On the left of the control centre, click on mount point. On the right panel, you should see an icon, Set Samba Mountpoints, click it, on the next panel you should see a button called Search Servers. Clicking it should display a list of the servers in your network.

The next part is from memory, been a while since I did this. Click on the server you wish to create a mount point to. There are some buttons that will show up. You need to create a mount point, and then mount it. Different buttons for each action. The server icons are animated, when the connection is made, you will see the two half's of a plug, plug in.

Now you should be able to browse to the mount point in your file system, see the share folders and files.

You can go to your /etc and cat fstab. If you look through the output, you should see some lines added for your mounts. This is teh file where you can manually edit as root and add mount points. Hope this gets you going in the right direction.

Thanks for the advice. Very helpful indeed. I will continue along these lines.
Thank you again.