ZERO luck with AD on Tiger – HELP!

Ok, I'm beginning to wonder if there's something completely bizarre about our environment here that is causing Tiger to fail - MISERABLY and COMPLETELY - to effectively work with AD and home directories. I've asked around, and apparently most people are getting it to work just fine in Tiger, which leads me to believe it's either something I'm doing, or something screwy we have going here. Here's the process I'm following. 1) Clean install Tiger. 2) Update to 10.4.1, then update to Security Patch 2005-006 3) Using Directory Access.app, bind the computer to Active Directory. 4) Uncheck the box for "Force local home directory on startup disk." 5) Add /Active Directory/domain.edu to the Authentication search path. So far, so good, right? Wrong. I try and log out and log in using an AD credentials. All I get is a spinning beach ball. Checking the system.log, the problem seems to be automount freaking out for some reason, as shown in the log excerpt below: Jun 22 19:04:13 test-imac automount[264]: Can't mount server.domain.edu:/user on /private/Network/Servers/server.domain.edu/user: Permission denied (13) Jun 22 19:04:13 test-imac automount[264]: Attempt to mount /automount/Servers/server.domain.edu/user returned 13 (Permission denied) Jun 22 19:04:13 test-imac automount[145]: Can't mount server.domain.edu:/user on /private/Network/Servers/server.domain.edu/user: Permission denied (13) Jun 22 19:04:17 test-imac automount[268]: Can't mount server.domain.edu:/user on /private/Network/Servers/server.domain.edu/user: Permission denied (13) Jun 22 19:04:17 test-imac automount[268]: Attempt to mount /automount/Servers/server.domain.edu/user returned 13 (Permission denied) Jun 22 19:04:17 test-imac automount[145]: Can't mount server.domain.edu:/user on /private/Network/Servers/server.domain.edu/user: Permission denied (13) Jun 22 19:04:21 test-imac automount[271]: Can't mount server.domain.edu:/user on /private/Network/Servers/server.domain.edu/user: Permission denied (13) Jun 22 19:04:21 test-imac automount[271]: Attempt to mount /automount/Servers/server.domain.edu/user returned 13 (Permission denied) Jun 22 19:04:21 test-imac automount[145]: Can't mount server.domain.edu:/user on /private/Network/Servers/server.domain.edu/user: Permission denied (13) Jun 22 19:04:23 test-imac kernel[0]: nfs server automount -fstab [145]: not responding Jun 22 19:04:23 test-imac KernelEventAgent[37]: tid 00000000 received VQ_NOTRESP event (1) Jun 22 19:04:23 test-imac KernelEventAgent[37]: tid 00000000 type 'nfs', mounted on '/automount/Servers', from 'automount -fstab [145]', not responding ... And so on, and so forth - that sequence repeats itself as long as I let the machine go. Here's the kicker. I tried the above 1-5 process, then went to the terminal and tried a dscl to see if I could read a record from Active Directory. Guess what - reading a record from AD causes the SAME THING to happen, automount starts freaking out. Why would automount kick in on a record read in dscl? If I were to CHECK the box for "force local home directory" - none of the above problems happen. The home directory sharepoint from AD mounts without a problem on the desktop, and I can log in, using AD credentials, without a problem. The problem only exists if I tell it I want to use the Windows home directory as the Mac home directory. For the record: this is a standard Windows home directory, shared via smb. So, the questions are: am I following the right procedure? And if I am, why is automount flipping out? PLEASE HELP. We have to roll out 55 Mac OS X 10.4 machines in less than a month, and right now, I'm so screwed. If there's anything I'm saying above that is at all unclear, please ask and I'll try and clarify.