After tons and tons of
I learned that Samba was NOT
the problem!
It was just plain ol' Windows being stupid.
First, I found this page:
http://www.geocities.com/phileosopho...wsxpfixed.html which I am linking here because if anyone else ever stumbles upon this post it may fix their problem, and it shows some control panel that there seems to be no other way to reach!?!?
Next I found (part of) my solution here:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Netw..._20377445.html
It seems that the service "WebClient" is what is screwing me over. However... combining these two solutions STILL didn't quite work for me... every time I booted up I had to re-enter my share passwords!
Which brings me to why the problem is so original (IMO). I have only one user on this machine, with no password. So WinXP was automagically booting into that account. To get the mounted share to work, I had to do the following fun:[list=1][*]Run 'control userpasswords2' and wipe all remembered passwords.[*]Add a password to my WinXP account (whose name has always matched the samba server account).[*]Use TweakUI to automatic login the user on bootup.[*]Disable the 'WebClient' service.[*]Reboot[/list=1]
I tried various permutations, and this was the only one that worked, so all the steps seemed to be required. This does not explain why my laptop has worked fine from day one. They both have the same NetBIOS settings, host files, mapped drives, etc, etc...
Thanx for trying! I now have my M, P, S, and W drives back!
- RR