Volume serial number is different, depending on the Novell Client being used

The serial number presented for a volume hosted on a Novell file server will be different, depending on the Novell Client being used on the workstation. This can be a problem for certain applications designed to be run on a stand-alone workstation (not from a network drive), which depend on the serial number for licensing, etc.

Contact the application's vendor and ask them to modify the application such that it does not base its licensing scheme on the volume serial number.

To workaround the problem, have all users of the application use either the XP/2003 Client or the Vista Client exclusively, assuming this does not violate licensing agreements for the application.

In the Novell Client for Windows XP/2003, the volume serial number returned by the Client (in response to Windows APIs that expect to return a volume serial number) is fabricated from the IPv4 network address or the internal IPX network number of the server on which the volume resides.  As a result, the serial number is the same for all volumes on a given server, and is never any sort of GUID or unique ID assigned to the volumes by the Novell server.

In the Novell Client for Windows Vista, the volume serial number is fabricated based on the volume name itself.
Thus, with Novell Client for Windows Vista, the volume serial number for every SYS: volume is 5C53-5953, or the byte-reversed representation of "SYS\" in ASCII.

With the Novell Client for Windows XP/2003, the serial number for the same volume, assuming the server has an IP address of 192.168.3.161, for example, would be C0A8-03A1, the byte-reversed representation of the IP address.

The result is that the volume serial number reported by Novell Client for Windows Vista is presumably different 100% of the time from what the Novell Client for Windows XP/2003 reported.