network is busy error

Alright this problem is most likely usolvable without being able to physically play around on the network but here goes....

Ok have a xp gateway providing dns/gateway service over a switch to various machines win/xp/2000/98/me/linux. The problem is with one ME machine I cannot write to any of the shares on the network, and the linux machines can't copy anything off.

I can connect to the internet, ping the other machines, add their shares as network places, and browse their directories, however once i try to write a file, boom, I get a :

Cannot replace or copy file: Network is busy

if i try to scp a file from the ME machine to a linux box, winscp freezes. Permissions are set correctly, full write access given to the user i login with.

One more symptom, from linux i can mount a share from the ME machine, but if I try to copy anything off, freeze city.

any suggestions

Sounds like a hardware or driver problem. Did you check if the driver in your linux system for the NIC is marked "experimental" and if it really does support the NIC?
Had this trouble on linux several times and recently it happened to me also on Windows XP, when i had installed the DLinkTX530A driver for a DLinkTX530B card.

Also, this happens quite often when using cheap hardware... If you get a NIC for $10, it is sometimes not even worth $1... Some companies are selling quite some crap today...