File association problems with Win2K server

Question

Hi,
I have a client - 5 Macs in a Win2K network. They're designers and store/work on all their jobs on a Win2K volume. About 2 months ago, problems started happening - files lost their application association (mostly all were turned into Unix exec files), causing sever problems with the workflow. Quark can't open a placed image in it's native app for instance, because the association has been lost. The user has to visit each file and re-associate. As you can imagine, this is not an ideal situation to say the least.
Furthermore, when re-associating the files, the option to "Always open with" is greyed out, so a one-time fix isn't possible.
I suspected that it was something to do with the windoze volume. I more or les proved it by copying one of the files to a local machine and then re-associating: all works as it should when the files are local. Copying the files locally is not an option though.
This really is at the limit of my windoze knowledge. Their sysadmin is also not sure what's happening, aside from the fact that there's no windoze app that's accessing the files and writing them back to the disk. The only thing that looks at the files is the daily backup and that's a read and not write operation. We're stumped, but it really needs sorting. I've suggested they move some of the files to another server and see if the same occurs, which may or may not prove the issue is with the server they're using now. Any guidance gratefully received.
All Macs at 10.4.5 and recent updates, all have QXP 6.5, CS2.

Answer 1

Probably nothing has changed with your server or your network. Typically, folks realize, "Hey! I can connect via SMB and that's my workaround for the 31 character file name limit!" Or possibly, your Mac folks are browsing the network for your server and selecting it through your Windows domain rather than a Mac zone. Tiger changed the appearance of Windows "WORKGROUPS" so that they now appear as upper/lower case instead of all caps. This use to be a good way to distinguish them from zones.
To guarantee your users are connecting via AFP, which is what I would recommend for a Mac workgroup, have them specifically use "afp://servername" in the "Connect to Servers" dialog. I don't recommend Apple's SMB because Mac OS X splits each file into separate resource and data fork files before placing them on the server. When Windows folks see this, it's a mess. And I don't recommend continuing to use Microsoft's SFM because its version of the AFP protocol hasn't been updated in years. Either way, look to a third party software solution.
Don't let the 65+ GB scare you. It's really not that bad if you're on a 100MB network but the server should recognize that all traffic is local and actually handle all the file moves itself without shuffling files across the network. A bit of a pain, but shouldn't take too long.
Good luck! bill
1 GHz Powerbook G4   Mac OS X (10.4.5)