[Samba] Microsoft Windows Offline Folders headaches

[kaze]

Once working they are great, but getting offline folders to re-synch can
sometimes waste many tens of minutes.

Right now I have a Windows 2000 laptop with a Samba server's existing public
folder share set as offline within network hood on the laptop
(\\Emerald\Public). The Windows laptop and the Samba server are in the same
workgroup. Other Windows clients can browse to the Samba server, get
prompted for and enter their password, and then get to shares and printers.
This one laptop can not ever see the Samba server anymore. It can however
get to it via IP address (\\192.168.1.5), after a bunch of painful waits for
timeouts and various "unknown is unaccessable" dialogues the laptop can then
print to the shared printer.

I made sure there are no files in the Windows machine's 'off-line cache',
un-checked all the 'Make available offline' checks - nothing. I completely
turned off Offline Folders, rebooted - when I setup offline folders again
the issue was still there! I think I'd even gone in the registry a few
months ago and deleted things like
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\NetCache\Shares
\//Emerald/public"

What to do?