Having struggled through this in 8.10 I finally decided to start over in 9.04 and this is how I got everything to work without the dreaded "failed to retrieve" error.
Open a terminal window.
Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal
Type in "sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf" without the quotes (you'll have to enter your password)
In the conf file find the line
workgroup = WORKGROUP
If your Windows workgroup (My Computer (right click) -> Properties - Computer Name tab has this info) is different change the line to read workgroup = YOURWORKGROUPNAME
Next scroll down a few lines until you find the line
name resolver order = lmhosts hosts wins bcast and delete the semicolon at the beginning of the line.
Save the changes and exit. Reboot. I don't know that rebooting is necessary but I'm still having to unlearn Windows and learn a real OS again.
When you next go to Places - > Network you should see the network workgroup and computers attached to it. From there you can open/connect to a computer and see it's shares. It's not like XP where you just have a list of all shares in My Network Places but at least you can see them. This worked for me on 2 clean installs of 9.04, hope it works for you.
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