I have never had a problem with Samba and networking. The only thing that irritated me was when in Windows, my laptop would be seen as "Samba 2.2.3a (build 26) iBook (IBOOK)." This is long and silly. I wanted for it to just say the name of the computer. After reading a few other hints on Samba, I got started. I figured the clue would be in the /etc/smb.conf file (which it is). The first step is to back up the conf file. In terminal type:
% sudo cp /etc/smb.conf /etc/smb.conf.bakSecond Step. Edit it. Open it up and you'll find there are a few categories each in [brackets]. The first one is called "global." This contains all the settings for Samba in general. The default is this:
[global] client code page = 437 coding system = utf8 guest account = unknown encrypt passwords = yesNote that there maybe an extra line if you have changed the name of the workgroup. After encrypt passwords = yes, simply add another line which says server string = %h - this will mean (after saving and restarting Samba) that Windows will just see your Samba server by the name of the computer. Alternativley, replace the %h with any text you like and that will be the name of the server.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030427132911582