Tiger Server – Samba horribly flaky

Has anyone here experienced MAJOR issues using Samba with Tiger Server? I just recently installed a new 10.4.3 Server to replace an older 10.3 one that ran without a hitch - now it seems that multiple times daily nmbd dies and the windows clients on my network are not able to access any shares until I shutdown and restart nmbd and smbd on the system - it's terrible. The logs are no help, no awry entries or any other clues to what might be going on. I found a long discussion on Apple's boards about the problem, but nobody came up with a satisfactory reason or solution to the problem - wondering if anyone lurking around here might have more insight. Furthermore, does anybody have any clue if compiling the latest version of Samba to replace the Apple compiled/provided one is feasible? At this point I'm not beyond doing that if it means it brings a little more stability back to the fileserver.