samba - Jun 2005 - Help! Settings in roaming profile are not "sticking"

I'm reinstalling my Windows XP box. It has been on my home domain with a
roaming profile for some time. I had earlier problems with the roaming user
not able to log in at all but I can now log in using that account thanks to
deleting the samba cache.

The problem now is that settings in the roaming profile are not
"sticking".
For example, the old profile has the "Coffee bean" background and the
XP
Themed appearance. Now, as it loads, it starts to set coffee bean, then
before fully loaded replaces it with windows-blue, and the windows style is
"classic". Moreover, I can't change the desktop or theme at all,
and icons
refuse to stay put if I move them. In the old setup, I had Outlook all set
up nicely. Now, although it starts up it says it can't load, and exits.

Can anyone give me a hint as to what has gone wrong? Is there some registry
or policy setting or machine-SID-related thing that would cause this?

Yours hopefully,
Ruth

System info: PDC is Samba 3.0 on Fedora Linux. I have 2 other XP machines
that have been using the profile ok, along with the former install on the
"problem" machine. Problem machine is a P4 3GHz, 1.5GB RAM. XP SP2
plus
latest patches.

> refuse to stay put if I move them. In the old setup, I had Outlook all set
> up nicely. Now, although it starts up it says it can't load, and exits.

I can't help you on the rest of your issues, but Outlook is particularly
weird, in how it was built.  Unless you've changed it, the default file
location is 
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application
Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Personal Folders.pst

Local Settings is a directory that does not roam by default.  Odd that MS
built Outlook, arguably the critical app for many people for better or
worse, to put it's data in a non-roaming location.  But I guess that's
their
way of saying "Use Exchange".