[Samba] WinZip causes Server to fail - Please help.......

[alex]

Is anybody suffering from a similar problem or can anybody suggest a cure or
a pointer......?
 
I've various hardware platforms (both HP & Intel though all SMP) scattered
around remote sites each running one of the following OSs (Redhat 7.2,
Redhat 7.3, Mandrake 8.2 & Mandrake 9.0) each with Samba installed (either
the version that ships with the relative OS or 2.2.5.2 or 2.2.8.2
(downloaded and installed in the last 48 hours).
 
All the servers suffer from the same issue.  That is, if a zip file is
created, modified or extracted using WinZip 8.0 (winzip 7.0 or 8.1 don't
appear to cause problems), then the SMB server will crucify itself.  Ping
responces can be received, but telnet, smb or any other service offered by
the server fails to respond.  The console is showing nothing but the login
prompt (no GUIs are active on any of the servers, though some have X
installed), though even this fails to respond to the keyboard.
 
The only cure appears to be a hardware reboot at which point all logs get
overwritten by the reboot process.
 
Up until now, our cure has been to simply use winzip 7 (and hence avoid the
problem), however a new package has been installed on the client
workstations that uses an integrated version of winzip 8.
 
Client workstations range from Win95 through Me to Win2kPro, XP Home/Pro &
Win2k Server in application mode - no corrolation between client OS and the
issue has been detected
 
I appologise for the lack of real detail (full OS, SMB etc configurations
are available if requested), but the issue appears to hitting every SMB
server i've built regardless of OS, Samba or file system (XFS, EXT3 and EXT2
are all represented accross the servers).  Most of the servers utilise
integrated Promise FastTrack100 cards (Intel SCB2 UDMA motherboards),
however others are hardware SCSI RAID based (again SCB2 motherboard with
RAID cards (this spec includes the server that is prompting the post)).
Others utlise AMI/LSI RAID cards.
 
Various test boxes have been built using either slower (single CPU PIIs and
dual PIII800s (IDE based)) or VMware GSX Server and none of these appear to
exhibit the problem.  It's only the native servers running on dual PIII1000+
hardware which suffer.
 
As you can imaging, testing is a bit difficult due to it involving causing a
live server to potentially need a hardware reboot which is something i'm not
particularly keen on doing (suprise, suprise)
 
In all other respects, each server functions perfectly in all other respects
and certainly in respect to SMB file serving.
 
Any hints, pointers or suggesions (unless they revolve around Win2k as an
alternative file server....) will be greatfully received
 
Alex