samba - May 2003 - Cups printer shared via samba require drives to be mapped

Hello,

I am sharing my cups printers via samba (2.2.7) on a redhat 7.3 machine 
running a firewall configured with iptables.

I have included my smb.conf file below. My problem is that windows machines 
can setup the printer just fine, search for the
the server astro, the users enter their smb passwd and username and they 
can ste up the printer.

However I find everytime they reboot their machine, they can no longer 
print to the printer. It is still there but print jobs just sit there. If 
the user, accesses a shared drive such as /home or /data. They are able to 
print again after clearing the print queue. I have got around this problem 
temporarily by mapping a network drive from the server astro on the windows 
machines however sometimes, windows for some unknown loses this mapped 
drive (even though I have set reconnect at logon).

Does this seem like normal behaviour? Is there someway to get around having 
to map a network drive to get the printer to work?

Thanks,

melinda


[global]
    workgroup = ASTROPHYSICS
    server string = Astro
    hosts allow = 129.94.162. 129.94.163. 127.
    printcap name = /etc/printcap
    load printers = yes
    printing = cups
    printcap name = cups
    guest account = smb
    log file = /var/log/samba/%m.log
    max log size = 0
    security = user
    encrypt passwords = yes
    smb passwd file = /etc/samba/smbpasswd
    unix password sync = Yes
    passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u
    passwd chat = *New*password* %n\n *Retype*new*password* %n\n 
*passwd:*all*authentication*tokens*updated*successfully*
    pam password change = yes
    obey pam restrictions = yes
    socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192
    dns proxy = no
[homes]
    comment = Home Directories
    browseable = no
    writable = yes
    valid users = %S
    create mode = 0664
    directory mode = 0755
[printers]
    comment = All Printers
    path = /var/spool/samba
    browseable = no
    public = yes
    guest ok = Yes
    writable = no
    printable = yes
[print$]
comment = Printer Drivers
path = /etc/samba/drivers
browseable = yes
guest ok = no
read only = yes
write list = @cups
[Data]
    comment = %U Data Directory
    path = /data/%U
    valid users = %U
    public = no
    writable = yes
    printable = no


Thanks,

Melinda