[Samba] Windows XP does not prompt for password for shared printer

[thomas.friedrichsmeier at ruhr-uni-bochum.de]

Hi!

Recently two Windows XP-boxes (one home, one prof-edition) have been added to our 
network - and started causing trouble. We have on file-/print-server running Samba 
2.0.10, using encrypted passwords. Everything is fine for the Win98-clients in our 
network, but the XP-boxes can access file-shares all right, but not the printers. The 
problem ist that XP simply does not ask for a password on the printer-shares and so 
obviously can't connect. Recently I found out, that if a password for a file-share that 
happens to be exactly the same as the one needed for the printer-share is stored on 
the XP-client, XP seems to eventually try out that password and is then able to connect 
- this takes about 30 seconds, though, and is not an acceptable solution.
The shares on the samba-server are all set up similar to the following (here's the 
printer-section):

[printers]
   comment = All Printers
   browseable = yes
   printable = yes
   public = no
   user = staffpub
   valid users = staffpub
   read only = yes

That is, I'm forcing the user-name to be "staffpub" and the clients only have to supply 
the correct password. As mentioned, this works fine with Win98-clients in general, but 
for the XP-clients, it works with the file-shares but not the printers.
Any ideas on this?

Thanks,
Thomas