samba - Jun 2004 - Inactive smb mounts freeze linux 2.6.5 and samba 3.0.4

Hi!

I am new to the list, but i've searched the archives to no avail.

A few months ago, I installed linux 2.6 and samba 3.
I use fstab to mount shares from a windows XP station. I have done this
successfully for years using 2.4 and samba2.

Mounting the remote shares work fine, for a while. After some inactivity or
a reboot of the windows XP station, mounted volumes become unusable. Not in
any ordinary sense, it just freezes the computer. This happen if i try to
reach a file on the mounted dir or just do a plain ls. I have to kill ls to
be able to go any further. Sometimes i even have to do kill -9.

If i then umount the volume and remount it, everything works fine again for
some time.

I have no idea what is the problem!

dmesg give me lines like these:
smb_add_request: request [c6e14e80, mid=1206] timed out!
smb_add_request: request [c6e14e80, mid=7] timed out!
smb_add_request: request [c3164e80, mid=1207] timed out!


Here are some infos
Slackware 9.1 installed, kernel 2.6.5 and samba 3.0.4.
I have tried with earlier versions of kernel 2.6 and samba3, but with the
same result.

This is the fstab line i use:
//winxp/c$    /mnt/winxp/c    smbfs    noauto,username=winxpuser    0    0

smb.conf looks like:
[global]
        workgroup = NORRNET
        netbios name = whyz-linux
        server string = whyz-linux
        interfaces = eth0
        security = user
        log file = /usr/local/samba/var/log.%m
        max log size = 50
        dns proxy = No
        encrypt passwords = yes
        wins server = 130.236.230.9
        hosts allow = 130.236.153.240 130.236.153.89
        socket options = TCP_NODELAY

I've been living with this for quite some time now, and it's getting
unbearable. Has anyone had the same problem?
Greatful for any advice

Erik