I have a win 2k user and a winXP home user who need to manually login to the samba server box even though in one case the winXP user name and login is the same as samba server user name and login (this setup works on my win 2k box)

on another win2k box the user name and password are different than for the same user on the samba box, but in the samba user setup the win user name is set to the actual win username.

also, printing seems really slow through the samba server (running RH9)

Your question seems confusing.
I will give you an answer, however you may know this already.

Make sure your win2k usernames and passwords are the same as the Samba and Linux usernames and passwords.
Samba is case sensitive, so to avoid conflicts, put all usernames and passwords in lowercase.

If this does not answer your question, please clarify.

Also, where is the slow down concerning the printing.
Is it during the actually printing.
Or is it the time between the request and the actual start of the printing ?

The samba and linux user and win2k user and pass were all set as the same (same problem happening on one xp box too, but the setup is working on 2 other win2k boxes)

all in lower case. You enter user name and password to get into windows, and no connection is made with the samba server. when you click on the samba server in network neighborhood it then asks for a user name and password. when you enter the same user name and password as when you logged into windows, you gain access to the server.

as for the printing, when you click on the print icon in any application, there is a significant lag between the time you hit the print icon and the print pop up window opening (say in acrobat) and then when you click [ok] there is another lag. during these two lags all processes of the computer seem to be halted, you cannot do anything else but wait (we are talking 20 to 40 second maybe) In word when you click the print icon, there is a lag between the time you click the icon and the popup "printing document" window.

-GRegory