Samba installed but will not launch

I know this is no help to you at all, pat4, but I feel your pain! I'm in exactly the same situation - i.e. ruing Xubuntu 16.04 (32-bit version) and going mad trying to make anything visible to my other machines. Samba does the same thing to me: asks for my password and then does nothing at all.

I've got the following packages onboard:

samba
system-config-samba
vsftpd
gksu

...and I've read numerous step-by-step guides and tried out various other advice on how to get things working (most of which, alas, is based on earlier versions of Xubuntu), but so far no dice, so I'll be watching this thread with interest.

It's a real shame, because otherwise I was really starting to like Xubuntu. This experience makes me wish I'd chosen a different distro now...

I don't suppose this info is relevant, but I'm dual-booting with Win7 on an Acer Aspire V3-731 laptop