samba problems, hit or miss

well first off it seems that whenever i use Samba on any distro its hit or miss... sometimes it works... sometimes no

well.. im using SuSE 10 and i cant even get it to hit..
cant see any windows computer on the network, my main concern is hooking up to my shared printer

i was looking through some walk throughs on google but i cant even get the first few steps to work... like connecting to the windows comp

does anyone else have problems with Samba on there Linux distrobutions?

if so what have you done to fix these problems and what advice do you have to offer users who know enough to follow along with linux *not dangerous users but not hardcore linux junkies*

thanks all :)