buccaneer

What configuration are you running? eg workstation or server. where are your sound files stored? eg cd, network drive or hard drive. what other programs or services are running that may interfere with playing your sound file?

i like to use webmin to setup cups give that a go & let us kno if u have any success

"sound quality is not that good" Hmm, doesnt really tell us much mate. it could be that your system resouces are heavily loaded. I have noticed when i play MP3s, cds, DVDs or other files containing audio formats that sound may become jittery &/or digitized, particularly if certain other resouces are needed for the sound file are you playing. What sort of sound file? and where is it being played from? may help in solving your problem?

i have been writting software since CPM when floppy drives were 8 inches (ie before PCDOS 1.0) and discovered linux with REDHAT 5.0. Mandrake is my choice for Linux OS's & i've been using it since version 8.0. my profession is in Broadcast Media and SysAdmin. check out my first site at www.nimfm.org. I set up and built the network for this community based radio station which runs two linux servers (1:web + Lan server, 2:Icecast server for Streaming media) 1 linux workstation (runs gnome and xmms and is used for accessing MP3s from a samba share) & 4 windows boxs for the numbskulls in the admin office. The experience I gained setting up this lan and my 20+ years of computing is why I call myself GURU.

try opening a terminal # nmblookup -M -S -d1 --<Group> where <group> is the name of the workgroup you have set up on your win2k box or try #smbclient -L <netbios name> -W <group> username=*,password=* this should give you some more meaningful error messages

1st things 1st does your laptop have a firewall or some form of security that is stopping it from replying to the ping? if so turn it off or loosen its rules at least. Also, have you tried? ping -c 4 -W 1 (address) this will ping (address) 4 times with a time out of 1 second.