I though that this was meerly a configuration error, but after working with all versions of Samba 3.x including the betas and speaking with other users, I have come to the conclusion that this is a bug. In any configuration that I have tried (Domain Controller, Stand Alone, LDAP, tdbsam, etc.) if the Samba server is the master browser on the network, shares on Windows XP Professional SP1 systems will not show up in the "Network Neighborhood". Windows 2000 and Linux shares work fine and in fact Windows XP systems can see the shares on Linux and Windows 2000 machines. The only way that I can make it work is to make a Windows 2000 or Windows XP machine the master browser. I did not have this problem on Samba 2.2.x and I am forced to continue using 2.2.8a as a domain controller until I can get this to work.
Problem persists with 3.02 and 3.02a.
I've found that this is the same problem as bug 1004. After doing an inventory of all 50 of our Windows XP Professional workstations, I've found that due to a naming convention in our organization, the Server Comment on all workstations contained a "'" which causes a string overflow problem in samba and samba does not advertise shares on the workstation.
Thanks for the feedback. I'm closing this as a duplicate. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 1004 ***
database cleanup