machinehead

Here is the quick and dirty way to get your samba file share. I did this on my VM for easier file transfers
1) system-config-securitylevel - select SAMBA
2) vi /etc/samba/
These are the lines I uncommented and modified. # and ; are commented out.
workgroup = netbios name = test-l1 security = user passdb backend = tdbsam
[public] comment = Public Stuff path = /home/samba public = yes writable = yes printable = no

3) smbpasswd -a
= your linux/windows username

4) /etc/init.d/smb reload

5) vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m udp -p udp --dport 137 -j ACCEPT -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m udp -p udp --dport 138 -j ACCEPT -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 139 -j ACCEPT -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 445 -j ACCEPT

Well I'm back to windows 2008 again on my desktop and one of the annoying things about the server version of vista is that it prevents the installation of things like Live messenger.
To get Live messenger 9 and all the other good live stuff;
1. Downloaded the Live messenger 8.5 MSI file from this link WLMessenger85.zip
2. Install the MSI file.
3. Download the Live 9 client "wlsetup-custom.exe" from Microsoft as normal and install
I'm guessing the MSI doesn't do a check of version of windows before installation, and the live client just does an upgrade if one program already exists.