Semaphore timeout period has expired?

WinXP to Win98 machine via 10/100 wired network (Draytek 2600 router)

I can see the Win98 machine in "My Network Places" in XP, the Win98
machine can print to my shared printer, but everytime i try to access
the win98 machine, i get an error message about not having access rights
and telling me that "the semaphore timeout period has expired"

Any clues please, i have googled and found lots of different
possibilities, none of which seemed relevant to my issue.

All i can say is "it used to work"