Have you confirmed that your Linux based distribution is properly configured to communicate with the windows smb shared directory?

It would help if we knew more about what Linux distro you are running, but, whatever distro it is, it needs samba to communicate with windows.
Do you have samba installed?
Do you have smb (or smbd) enabled in the services section. In Gnome I have a Services menu in System --> Administration. If you have that in your distro you can check to see (1) if it's there and if it is (2) if it's enabled.
I'm sorry I don't actively use samba, but a quick way to check would be to type "service smb on". I use Fedora with Gnome, and, if I type that phrase, there is no reply if samba is installed and the smb daemon is running. If it is not installed I get an error message.
If you don't have samba installed, you can go to your administration menu, click on add/remove software, search for samba then install it.
Since I don't know what distro or Window Manager you are using I can't be more precise in my instructions than that.

LOL..this is under Suse Enterprise, my dumb. If your using Gnome in Suse, the above should work the same as in Fedora.