Thanks for the reply Bill,
The workstations are Windows 2000 Pro and XP Home. Both have returned the same error. The SME is set up to be a domain controller. I don't know if SME is using WINS, I was hoping to be able to not use it, my switch logs a large amount of broadcast traffic that I was attributing to the Windows resource announcements (please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's due to WINS broadcasts).
All my workstations get IP addresses via DHCP with MAC address reservations through the other SME server. This other box is the firewall/internet gateway with email/web/DHCP/primary DNS services running. This box has been up and running for the last year and a half or more.
I don't know how to create 'machine accounts' on the SME box, I thought all that was needed was to create the user accounts. The Win2K domain required machine accounts be set up for each workstation (starting with NT, Win9X machines didn't need an account, just the user ID). I did set up all the user accounts on the SME box.
As I write this, I recall setting up DHCP to provide a WINS address, but I don't remember if I set that up on the SME box or if it was set up when I had Win2K providing DHCP services. I'll check that again when I get home (I'm at work right now).
It's possible it's a resolution issue but I would imagine the user shares wouldn't be available if names were not set up properly. I have no experience with sharing network resources on Linux apart from the user shares created when you create a user ID.
My biggest concern was the log entries stating the lpr service couldn't find a printer port - these logs are on the SME box. I tried setting up the printer on all 3 available local printer ports. I was initially guessing it was a resource conflict. I've seen certain software expect the default printer port to be on IRQ 7 only and if PNP allocated the default IRQ to something else, the software would say no ports were available. This is why I tried all 3 ports, if SME is expecting LPT1 to be on IRQ7, LPT2 to be on 5 and 3 to be on 2/9, I hoped the internal printer port would be recognized as one of these. I was wrong.
I know the combination works, it worked fine for quite a while under Win2K server. If I can't figure this out, I won't be going back to 2K or anything, if necessary I can use a network print server or something but I'd prefer to keep the printer on the server.
I will check the WINS settings when I get home, in the mean time does anyone else have any ideas?
Dave