Wrestling Samba

Samba is a very cool tool, especially if you have a mix of Windows and *nix servers and clients. But it seems like every time I have to do anything with Samba, it’s like pulling hair and teeth to get everything to work properly. On paper, Samba is easy to set up and configure. In real life, I always end up wanting to pitch the Windows box out the window.
You read through the Samba man page, set up smb.conf to do what you want and then go to the Windows box and try to map the share you just set up. Then all you get are message boxes from Windows claiming the username and password are invalid. Or it works fine on one Windows box, but doesn’t work on any other ones. Or only one account works, but none of the others. Nothing wrong with what you put into smb.conf. Works just fine on the server with smbclient. Just the stupid Windows boxes refuse to work properly.
Argh.
Update: Ok, finally got things to work nicely. Upgrading to Samba 3.0.2 did the trick. I guess the docs I was using and the Samba version I had installed didn’t quite match up. Still want to pitch my Windows box out the window though.