samba - Jan 2001 - win2000 plaintext works, but services acting as a user don't

I am using plaintext passwords in a an environment, where I have a
daemon program that needs access to the samba share.  When I log in as a
specific user, using palintext passwords, I have all the rights I need
on a Samba share, but when I get the program to run as that user, it
doesn't.

basically, it seems that the rgkey for plaintext password gets used in
user space, but I need this program to run regardless of who is logged
in.  I can either set it to run as a server process, or as a specific
user.  In both cases the plaintext seems to fail.

I really am going nuts, as windows isn't helping me any in it's logs,
and the samba is simply reporting an authentication failure..