Accessing a Windows 2003 Share from OS X

all in the head - Accessing a Windows 2003 Share from OS X

At home we have a Windows 2003 Server running as a domain controller and file server. Whilst this does its job pretty nicely for Windows clients, I've never been able to connect to it successfully with my Mac running OS X 10.3 Panther. Browsing the network I have always been able to see the server, but any attempt to authenticate simply returned a error along the lines of "the original item cannot be found". Frustrating.

Despite much searching over the last six months, I%u2019d not found the solution %u2013 until today. Allow me to share the solution again, for the benefit of those searching with the same problem.