Unable to access NetWare CIFS shares

Purpose:

Novell Native File Access for Windows (CIFS) has been installed and configured on the NetWare server but the shares cannot be accessed from the Microsoft Windows workstations.

Symptoms:

From the same workstation is possible to access shares on Microsoft servers and Samba servers, but trying to reach a share on a Novell CIFS server the following error is returned:

"\\server_ip_address\
The network path was not found."

Changes:

NetBIOS over TCP/IP has been disabled on the workstation

On the problem workstations go to:

Network Connections --> Local Area Connection Properties --> Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) Properties --> Advanced TCP/IP Settings --> WINS

and in the NetBIOS setting select "Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP".

When Microsoft implemented CIFS it was done over NetBIOS, then moved to encapsulate NetBIOS packets inside TCP/IP (NetBIOS over TCP)

It was at that time that Novell implemented support for the CIFS protocol, so Novell CIFS only emulate Microsoft CIFS with NetBIOS over TCP/IP.

Later on, Microsoft implemented an option of running CIFS removing the requirement for NetBIOS and running directly over TCP/IP, but Novell CIFS did not implement this new mode, whereas Samba did.

Novell's CIFS implementation only runs using NetBIOS over TCP/IP.