Vista & D-Link -VS- Samba

I'm going to blame this on Vista, but I think it may be D-Link's fault. For the last few weeks, the three Vista laptops have not been able to access the FC4 Samba server. The four XP machines can. When attempting to access \\Scully\Samba i got the message: the network or server is unreachable. (NOTE: If I connect the laptop via LAN cable, everything works.)

I stumbled across a similar post regarding Ubuntu and Belkin where the solution was to use the IP address of the server rather than the name, in other words: \\192.168.69.13\Samba This works.

That means the problem is either DNS or or Windows Name Resolution. From CMD, I can ping scully, so it has to be on the Windows side (PNRP or LMhosts?) When I map to \\192.168.69.13\Samba, the drive is available. Just for fun, I added the IP address to the hosts file, and now the name works.

Since this is Vista, however, we cannot simply add the IP to the hosts file:

1. Click the Vista icon (or press [Ctrl][Esc])
2. In the Start Search box, type CMD.
3. An icon will appear under Programs.
4. Right click on the icon, and select Run as administrator.
5. Confirm all warnings.
6. At the command prompt, type:
    notepad C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts
7. Add the IP address and Windows machine name.

Now, we can map network drives by host name.