I am still not fully sure where you are at. For now I will only assume we need to create persistent connections using VL as a client and XP as the server. In other words, we are working from the VL box, trying to read files on XP. Please try to follow these instructions:
First, go to XP, click on Start then Run.. , enter "cmd" and click OK. In the command line box, enter "ipconfig" and take note of the IP address of your XP machine. It will probably be something like "192.168.1.2".
On your VL box, as root, in a terminal:
Enter command
ping IP_of_XP
substitute the actual value for IP_of_XP
If you see an output repeating something like:
From 192.168.1.3 icmp_seq=4 Destination Host Unreachable
Press "Ctrl-c" and stop right there. Post result below.
If you see an output repeating something like:
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.162 ms
press "Ctrl-c" and continue to the next step:
Create a file "/root/smbcreds". Edit it and make it look like this:
username=samba_user_name
password=samba_password
Substitute your actual values for samba_user_name and samba_password.
Add the following line to "/etc/fstab":
//IP_of_XP/SHARE /home/davy/XP_SHARE cifs auto,rw,credentials=/root/smbcreds 0 0
Again, substitute your actual values where needed.
now issue command:
mount -a -t cifs
Check to see if it mounted properly. If this works, we can go forward from here. Post your results below.