This is not really a hint, but a happy announcement. Since March 2005, I've been unable to connect to my university's server using SMB via the Finder on Tiger. I'd get a "Mount tree phase error -36," which happened only when connecting thru the Finder -- using the smbclient Terminal command did the trick. I finished my Masters degree, and yet this was still broken in the first release of Leopard.
This bug appears to be solved, finally, with the release of Security Update 007-009 for 10.5.1. Maybe the 10.4.11 version fixes Tiger's problem, too, but I can't test that...
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080115143756602