I seem to have found a discrepancy between using the backend tdbsam and smbpasswd. When using the backend smbpasswd if i have logon path = \\$L\profiles\%u\%m then profiles are read and created correctly. If I then switch the backend to tdbsam I get errors on both win2k and winxp stating that the profiles cannot be located. After some investigation I noticed that when I then logged out of win2k and winxp the clients tried to save roaming profile on the samba server called "%u". I then changed the logon path to read : logon path = \\$L\profiles\%U\%M ; i.e UPPERCASE 'U' and 'M' and the roaming profiles get created and read correctly now.