OS 10.5 - How I solved my SMB problems

I was having a terrible time getting my OS X 10.5.7 Mac to connect with Windows shares. The first problem was that when I went to "Connect to server" I would get the message "the text entered does not appear to be a recognized url format". I tried everything including the Apple fix. That did nothing. After doing lots of researching and reading I found something that suggested that I do a "repair permissions". I replaced the folder URLMOUNT to it's original location and then I went into the disk utility and clicked on the the "repair disk permissions" button. I let it do it's thing and when I read the log it created I saw that it had repaired the permissions on the URLMOUNT folder. I rebooted the Mac and went into "Connect to server" and voila, it was fixed. Unfortunately I still could not connect to a Windows share. After fooling around with the Windows computer for a while, changing users and passwords to no avail, I decided to open the console to see if there were any errors there that would give me a clue. Lo and behold I saw the following in the console:

9/1/09 6:44:32 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.smbfs_load_kext[232]) posix_spawnp("/System/Library/Extensions/smbfs.kext/Contents/Resources/load_smbfs", ...): No such file or directory

At that point I launched "Pacifist" and found the original "smbfs.kext" file on my install DVD and copied it to the appropriate folder using "Pacifist". This time I did not even have to reboot, all of my Windows shares showed up in the Network.

I am a happy camper now. And I have only been working with a Mac for four days.

I hope this helps some of you who may be having similar problems.