I suspect the reason for the distinction is that in file://server/file/name,
server must be a DNS name, while in \\x\shareC\foo\bar, x is a Windows
machine name. They're not necessarily the same thing. So
file:////x/shareC/foo/bar means look for the file that on my local file
system is called //x/shareC/foo/bar.

Michael Kay

Grtz,
Geert