I could see my Linux box from windows after an attempt at setting up samba. I couldn't log in because I haven't configured the accounts properly yet, but I could see the machine. I read that xinetd could handle samba, so I eeked out a config file and started using it instead. Now the host didn't appear at first. Later it appeared but returned the error: The computer or sharename could not be found. Does xinetd have any trouble with samba, or should I be able to get it working just as well as if I weren't using xinetd?

Xinetd is not ment to run samba

the commando
Service smbd start

will start samba

with the commando:

ntsysv you'll see what services will be run at startup
and you can select or deselect those services

It used to be run from the inetd but this was slow and give in on the overall performence of samba

So use xinetd only for telnet,ftp and ssh and that kind of stuff and run samba as it is.

with ps -ef you should see smbd -D and nmbd -D

then samba is running and accepting connections from your windows clients using the smb protocol