UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Sorry if the is in the wrong section, but would like to know if anyone can help with the following

I am on a network using Windows XP and am having problems viewing/manipulating files on one of the shared drives, which happens to be a snap server. I have no other problems with any of the other shared drives, just this one, which is also unix. I can view the file icons, but when I attempt to double click to open them, it is unrecognizable (image files) or says I need a translator installed to view (powerpoint files), and it says "Cannot copy [file name]: The specified server cannot perform the requested operation."

What is causing the incompatability? As I said, I have no other problems. I do not believe it to be a permissions issue, as I get no such message as I would when I try to access some other drive that does not have me as an authorized user, and due to the error message when trying to copy/paste/move files, I think it has something to do with the server compatability or server itself.

Any thoughts?

In unix a file is a bag of bytes. Not like Windows, which maintains file metadata about whether the file is "binary" or not. When Samba serves a file, it doesn't "translate" to binary or anything like that. -- as an example.

When you right-click and get file properties does it work correctly? I'm thinking somebody outsmarted themselves and used an interesting setting to get files to the unix server from a windows box.