Connecting to Windows Server 2003

You might want to go to the options tab I beileve in remote desktop to select the local resources, select your hard drive. Now when you remote desktop to the windows server it will bring your local hard drives with you and will be visible in My Computer in Windows. However restically you shouldn't be accessing files that way, it would be better if you set up a share on that server. Then you would access the share you need by doing smb://servername.com/sharename

You may want to try adding a search suffix in your networking settings. Open up system preferences, go to network and then the network card you are using. You will see something that says Search Domains. Try putting in the name of your domain there. Also make sure you are connecting to the correct share name, do you know if these are regular shares or DFS shares?

You may want to try adding a search suffix in your networking settings. Open up system preferences, go to network and then the network card you are using. You will see something that says Search Domains. Try putting in the name of your domain there. Also make sure you are connecting to the correct share name, do you know if these are regular shares or DFS shares?

Rather than browsing the network to connect to your server I suggest you instead enter the path to the server directly. Use one of the following:

smb://serverName
smb://serverName.domain.com
smb://IPAddress

Keep in mind that your Windows Server 2003 server must have the "Digitally Sign Communications (required)" policy disabled or you still won't be able to connect. You'll receive a message about an incorrect user name or password. If your server administrator is unwilling to lower the security of his server then you may want to look into using a better SMB client that supports digitally signed communications. I suggest Dave from <http://www.thursby.com>.

Hope this helps! bill

1 GHz Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

I have a client who is experiencing the same exact problem but with a slight variation. They were having trouble connecting to a Windows 2003 Server for filesharing. I have joined the proper workgroup in Directory Access which didn't help. I was getting the very helpful "The alias **** could not be opened, because the original item cannot be found" error when trying to connect through the Finder and an error about not being able to read the files with -32 error when trying to connect via command-K using smb://IP Address or smb://IP Adress/volume all of which has worked just fine on numerous other Windows servers I've come across.
After some research I found about the digitally signed communications being enabled by default and was able to disable to that. And then...it worked! For all of 5 minutes or so it worked great. I was able to connect to all the shared volumes, make aliases that connected right to it and restart the MacBook numerous times and it kept working. And then, it just stopped working. Same errors about the messed up aliases and the -32. I restarted the HP Server and wit worked again, for about the same five minutes and then I was SOL until the server was again restarted. Something on that server is blocking communications with the MacBook (and another MacBook too because I tested that one as well with the same frustating results) within 5-10 minutes of the Server rebooting and initially allowing the MacBook to connect as a client. But what? I am at a loss.
Any input would be most welcome. Thanks.

This program is a little pricy but it works for getting on Windows servers where ssl is being used.

You'll have to ask your Network/Server administrator to help you out with this one. Problem is Mac OS X doesn't support digitally signed SMB file sharing sessions and Windows 2003 server requires them. Older versions didn't. So you'll have to ask the administrator to change 'requires' digitally signed communication to 'use if client supports'. I've posted a more-detailed explanation on my personal blog http://etosx.blogspot.com/2007/09/tip-connecting-macos-x-tiger-clients-to.html which is of course not related in any way to apple so apple is not responsible if by following my advice you end up breaking your computer [wink]