We are fairly new to linux. This is our first time creating an Ubuntu Server Edition 8.04 with Samba in a LAN environment. It is not set up as a domain controller. We were briefly able to view the computer in Vista's network list, and able to access a shared folder...but NO LONGER visible and we are not able to resolve the problem. We aren't sure what changed. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

What is your Windows network environment - Active Directory, Domain, workgroup? Your Samba server has to be set up in a similar fashion. If you are using Active Directory, I think you will need to explicitly add this machine to your domain using whatever server is handling your AD.

It does sometime seem to take a while for the Windows machine to get locked onto the Samba server. Have you tried explicitly entering the Samba server's name (\\server_abc) from a Windows machine (Add Network Location), rather than relying on the Network Neighborhood approach? That seems to work better, at least initially. Also, you'll want a fixed IP address for the Samba server.

There are some differences between Vista and previous Windows versions regarding what ports are used and what protocols. You might need to tweak some smb.conf settings.

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I apologize for not responding - project was placed on hold durning economic downturn. Thank you, creating the mapping directly did work.