Home Premium Samba authentication failure

I've been trying for several months to solve this problem. I have a home office network with a Debian Linux server, which I'm using as a calendar/file/print server, two Linux laptops, one XP machine and one laptop running Windows 7 Home Premium, which came preinstalled on the laptop.

When I try to access the shares on the Debian machine, I keep getting authentication failures. I've tried my Windows username/password, my Linux username/password, and even created new users on both systems to try different solutions.

All the computers are able to print through the Debian server. However, file sharing using the Debian machine as a Samba server does not work on the Win7 laptop. It works fine with all the other computers in the house. I've tried a registry hack, setting LMCompatibilityLevel to both 1 and 2, checked and rechecked my Samba configuration, even tried resetting the clock (an odd solution I found online that some said helped.) But when I specify Home Premium in my searches, I see lots of questions, but no answers. So I thought I'd ask here.

Has anyone solved this issue, and if so, how?

I've managed to fix this problem. You have to put the name of the Samba server in the hosts file (I don't know why this works but it has several times for me) - see at the bottom of this:

C:\Users\robert>type \Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost

#<ADDITION>#
192.168.2.40 my_samba_server