Access a Samba share from Windows Mobile 5.0

When you try to access a samba share (Linux) from your Windows Mobile PocketPC and get the error message "The network path was not be found." then this page could perhaps help you out.

The problem in my situation was that the Windows Mobile device was sending NetBios name requests and nobody answered them.

So I reconfigured my Samba configuration so that it answers WINS calls and transfers them over DNS.

# Windows Internet Name Serving Support Section:
# WINS Support - Tells the NMBD component of Samba to enable its WINS Server
wins support = yes

# WINS Server - Tells the NMBD components of Samba to be a WINS Client
# Note: Samba can be either a WINS Server, or a WINS Client, but NOT both
; wins server = w.x.y.z

# This will prevent nmbd to search for NetBIOS names through DNS.
dns proxy = yes

You need to switch your Windows Mobile device to "Work" instead of "The Internet" otherwise name resolution will still fail.
(tap on the network card and you can modify those settings)

After this, my setup worked. I hope this works for you too.

Good luck!
Jeroen