ok so I got this working. it was so easy once you guys said to just use the ip. on the client laptop, I just mapped a drive to //192.x.x.x/C$ and clicked the "connect as different user" and entered...

i get sort of a related problem like this every once in a while, instead of trying to figure out why win2k gives me such garbage, i create an account on server (the one you are mapping a drive to) ...