How can I connect 10.4 Mac to Windows Small Business Server 2003?

Question

I have seen some other discussions touching on this topic and have tried the various solutions but am getting nowhere. I can't connect my iBook, which is running Tiger, to our office's server, a Windows Small Business Server 2003. I am the only Mac user and as a Mac devotee actually spent my own hard cash for the iBook. (I work for a non-profit with low funds.) Previously, when our office had a different server and I had Panther, I could access the server. Then it was purely an academic exercise, since I had no need to access the shared files. Now I have a project that requires this, and I am stumped. Our part-time IT consultant is also stumped. We have tried a lot of the suggestions from other posts, to no avail. I suggested to the IT guy that there could be a problem regarding the encryption of my password, and I think he tried that. We have tried various versions of the domain name. The server comes up in the list when I follow the "go--connect to server--browse" path, but we come up empty. We've gotten error message -36, a message that we are trying to connect an alias to something that can't be found, and a message that we don't have enough information to go any further (something like that). I am writing from my eMac at home, so I can't reconstruct the situation right now. I have found in my extensive internet search that Thursby has something called ADmitMac that is pretty expensive software ($119 for one person) that I could install on the iBook and could help me access the Windows Small Business Server 2003 without doing anything else to the server. Does anyone know if that would that work? Any suggestions would be so appreciated!
eMac and iBook   Mac OS X (10.4.4)  

Answer 1

I have specific errors listed below:
Actually, I have been encountering similar problems.  I have an end user who wants to connect to an SBS 2003 server, and can not connect/use RWW because the Active X will not work, cannot use the VPN in PPTP mode because Windows 8 disallows the connection
("Error 942: The connection could not be established because the authentication method used by your connection profile is not permitted for use by an access policy configured on the RAS/VPN server."), and cannot use an L2TP VPN connection because it requires
a certificate "Error 766: A certificate could not be found. Connections that use the L2TP protocol over IPSEC require the installation of a machine certificate, also known as a computer certificate.".  I attempted to utilize the SBS Connection Tool downloaded
from RWW, but it fails with a proxy error ("Unable to execute custom script (Configure proxy settings for IE). Required file could be missing." - likely due to the PPTP tunnel it tries to use). I went so far as to install the Enterprise CA on the server, installed
the Hotfix
(KB922706) so that the website could be accessed from Vista and above, and installed the requested certificate.  The VPN fails to connect after
it times out and fails to negotiate a connection.  This last one is "Error 789: L2TP connection attempt failed because the security layer
encountered a processing error during the initial negotiations with the remote computer."
I have screenshots to share if anyone cares to see.  I really just get the feeling that Microsoft is trying to kill SBS 2003 by ingoring it into oblivion. 
The VPN works fine with Windows 7 clients by the way.