[Samba] clueless XP / 98/ smb

[Matthias Mitze]

Hi,

I know that this problem is beeing discussed since weeks and several times,
but so far I have not found what I am looking for...
I have a small network with a smb box (suse 9.0 smb 2.9) a hardware router
which is doing the dns forwarding and dhcp service and 4 laptops.
Three laptops have XP and one is older and is running 98.
The 98 box can access the smb box without any problems, but from XP I can
see the network, but I can not access it, I can not even access XP Folders
which are shared.

The funny situation is that I am also in charge of a similar network, but
the difference there is that the router is a fli4l / linux box and that
there are except for my xp laptop only 2000 machines running like a dream
for more than a year, there I can access the smb machine from XP, but only
like a lottery, sometimes it works, some times it does not. There I can
influence it, by changing some parameters back and forth and restarting the
smb server several times.

I am completly clueless, where the solution lies - do I have an XP problem
(beside the fact that M$ is a general problem...), do I have a DNS problem
or is it Samba?

During the last days I read a posting here that most of this problems should
be solved by upgrading to 3.0.4 and that changing the M$ registry does not
help at all?
Is this true?

If necessary I will provide the conf.files

Desperate for help
Matthias