I just worked my way through an interesting ordeal involving Windows file sharing and SMB. I was trying to select 'Windows File Sharing' in the Sharing system pref, but it wouldn't activate. I quickly checked Apple's support page on the issue and found I had already tried all the resolves (reconnecting to network, logging out, restart). I read a recent post on this site about checking the console to catch incoming errors. What I found was the following:
Starting SMB server /System/Library/StartupItems/Samba/Samba: /etc/smb.conf: No such file or directorySo, after a futile Finder search, I used a utility to show hidden files and went hunting for the missing file. What I found where the file was supposed to be was a broken alias to the actual file. I hadn't hunted this deeply into the system before, so I didn't know yet that the actual file was supposed to be here. Well, after doing some research on the internet, I found that this indeed should be here. I'm stumped as to how the actual file was replaced with just an alias.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030915025154318