It's hard telling; I'm finding that some of the stuff I had wasn't needed:0) or I need to reboot to make sure it isn't needed. However, linux is pretty good about showing results without rebooting.

try the following:

type: cd
then
type: cp /etc/hosts lmhosts

you aren't going to belive this... I just rebooted, and it works perfectly!!!!! Thank you!! I wish I could shake your hand right now.

Crap. It worked for 3 seconds right after I used it. I think I know what's going on. What I'm looking at is something like an explorer menu which looks like this:
SMB Network > HOME > the-cool-one > C, with C being my C:/ Drive on my windows box.
When I close C, and then open it again, it says Operation already in progress. Maybe it doesn't close the connection w/ the XP box, and then when I try to open one, it gets confused, because one is supposedly open already. At any rate, now XP refuses to see linux, but I don't know why. It seems to be something with me trying to acess samba with the wrong password, but I don't know how to change my user status. Arrgh. I feel like just unmerging and remerging Samba, and trying again w/ a fresh slate.