I keep two major directories available thru samba to win7 machines on my lan.
A peculiar thing happens when ever I first access them after a reboot on windows. (I think a reboot of linux or even a restart of samba would cause the same thing). When, in wind7 gui, I click on the shares, I'm prompted for the credentials. The credentials are rejected, but as soon as leave that dialog the share opens with full access. Its a bit confusing. I haven't pared down and cleaned up smb.conf for a very long time but the basic setup (not the share names and such) was established when I moved from gentoo linux to debian. (Fairly recently) I left all comments alone even though it makes it much longer, in case it was pertinent to also see what is NOT enabled. Its 500+ lines so have attached rather than inlined smb.conf below:
smb.conf
Description: /etc/samba/smb.conf