Can I run Samba (music files) without logging into Ubuntu first?

[infocom]

I have setup Samba and use SWAT to configure the shares. I have a USB hard drive on Ubuntu with all my Music, and my XP and Xbox machine's music library is set to this. All works OK.

Except I need to login in to Ubuntu as my user before XP and Xbox can access the directory. Does anyone know how to fix this?

Thanks

P.S. This is because I want the directory accessible without logging into Ubuntu. This is because my machine is tucked away in another room and I have it to shutdown and start up automaticaly, so its only on in the day, and shuts down at night, and I dont have to do anything with it, except now I have to login which spoils the whole thing.

[andguent]

When you say "log in", I assume you mean a GUI/Gnome login. Is this correct?

Try the following for me so we can get a better picture of what you have going on.
* Do a Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get a text login (Note: Ctrl-Alt-F7 should get you back to the GUI). Can you post the output of the mount command before and after logging in to the GUI? We want to compare the differences, as I assume something Gnome related is auto detecting your external drive.
** Note: Try a mount >> /tmp/mymountouput.txt to save it so you don't have to type the whole thing manually. See that text file for output.

* Also, can we have the output of the following:
** fdisk -l (that is a lowercase letter L, not a numeral one)
** testparm
** cat /etc/fstab

[superprash2003]

you would need to mount those 2 drives automatically by placing them into your fstab file..