SVN checkout on Ubuntu VM pointing SVN server running on Windows XP gives only timeout

Hi,

I have working SVN server with several repositories running on my XP desktop.
I have several VMs (VMware server) running on my windows XP desktop.

I can checkout any SVN repository within any of my Windows based VMs; so far all good.
Now I recently created my first Linux based VM (Ubuntu).

Doing a checkout on the Ubuntu VM as per below command just times out.

svn checkout --username xxx --password xxx file::///windowsdesktop-IP/LocalRepos

The above nicely works from any Windows based VM using tortoisesvn
I installed rapidsvn and tried the GUI way to checkout, but same timeout.
Via Places I can browse in Ubuntu VM to that shared folder LocalRepos on my Windows XP desktop.

Any ideas? I am new to Linux.

Cheers,
Pat