Before I go any further just let me say how great it is to have all of you helping out poor schlubs like me so that I can get my network going with Linux and Windows

OK, here it is in a nutshell

Problem:

I can access the network printer and the other windows machines from the FC3 OS. This is a big relief.

Now though, I still can't access the linux machine from the windows machines. I can see a "localhost" for the drive but I cannot access it.

On My XP machine I get a message saying that I do not have permission to access that drive and then below it, it says that there are duplicate names and that I need to change it in the Control Panel and then System. I have checked several things and have change a few things around but to no avail. I am thinking that it probably has something to do with the firewall or something maybe???

I disabled the firewall in XP but that didn't help, and I looked a few firewall tutorials on the web.

I tried to review a few things on line but it got pretty confusing when it started talking about changing things in the firewall.

On my ME machine I get a prompt for a password but then it doesn't let me in saying that it is incorrect. Which it isn't. Then sometimes it just tells me that the "localhost" could not be found on the network and that it may have been deleted???

I tried to add my personal account to the linux machine but no matter what I do all I ever see is the localhost machine on the network.

What am I not doing or doing wrong???

I appreciate the help greatly.

Do you have samba installed and configured? Samba allows Windows machines to see Linux machines on a network.

Thank you for the reply,

I should have gotten back on here and added a note to the end of this thread to let everyone know that I finally got it going with a little help from the good folks here.

thanks everyone,