I read your discussion of problems with access to SMB shares in Panther. Here's something I discovered when working with one of the betas.
Fire up NetInfo Manager and browse to /users/yourname/passwd. The passwd _should_ be "******". This is a representation of a shadow password (a feature added in Panther). If you see something like "YW3273hhs," that's a standard hashed Unix passwd (which Jaguar used).
If you have a hashed passwd, use System Preferences to change your password (you can give it the same value it used to be). Reload NetInfo Manager and you'll see it has changed to "******"
I found that this helped enormously when trying to connect to Windows and SAMBA shares.
November 3, 2003
Sean Sperte points to the Directory Access utility:
One thing that helped my painful SMB browsing experience in Panther was to set the correct workgroup in the Directory Access utility app (found in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder). Once I did this, problems accessing "folders" (or drives) more than one time were solved.
November 3, 2003
Dave de Groot offered the same idea, but called it a partial solution:
I found that you need to add your domain to the SMB WorkGroup on your Mac. You can do this by opening the "Directory Access" app in the Applications:Utilities folder, clicking on the lock to authenticate, clicking on SMB, clicking on Configure, and then typing your workgroup (or domain) into the WorkGroup field.
After doing this, you should be able to browse for servers in that domain. Furthermore, your servers will show up in the Network area of the Finder.
The only drawback is that if you have a home network, you need to change that workgroup setting again when you get home.
