Well, after trying everything I could think of to fix this problem, with no luck, I eventually gave up. I did try installing a fresh copy of win7 on a spare drive, which worked perfectly, proving beyond doubt there was nothing wrong with either the hardware or the linux server config. Unfortunately that wasn't an option for the box in question as it would have taken days to a couple of weeks to reinstall all the programs and get everything working correctly.

I ended up just mapping drive letters to the relevant shares, which is a usable workaround although clunky. It kept me going all right, though.

Then, about a week ago, I accidentally double-clicked an ODF document on the server share directly, which was the part that had stopped working.

It worked perfectly...

At some point between the last time I checked a couple of months ago, and a week ago, the problem fixed itself as mysteriously as it had broken itself I have no idea what broke, why, how, or when, or the same for why it suddenly started working again. I've tested it thoroughly and it's working as well as it ever did. No idea at all.

Don't you just love the semi-random non-deterministic behaviour of windows?

pca