samba - Apr 2004 - 'homes' inaccessable, but the 'auto' named home is

I'm having a wierd problem I don't quite understand. For some users 
(me in particular) the 'homes' share cannot be accessed. Windows XP 
returns 'the sharename can't be found' or asks for a password.
Supplying
one doesn't help.
  Assing the 'named' autocreated version works fine. Every time.

  Then sometimes for no apparent reason 'homes' will work.

  This does not affect all users, only a small subset.

  The PDC is 3.0.2a on a digital unix box. The 'homes' share is on 
another machine also running 3.0.2a configured in  'DOMAIN_MEMBER' 
member mode. This server also contains the profiles share. That works, 
downloading the profile is fine.

  The only odd thing is that i've managed to get my smbpasswd file full 
of 'dead' users by removing them from Unix and not that file and I have
passdb backend = tdbsam, smbpasswd. There are no dead users in tdbsam 
only the old smbpasswd file.

  I've since fixed our user removal program to remove users from the 
samba password file as well.

  I'm wondering if they are related. Every thing seems to work otherwise.