Recently I had faced an issue regarding opening SharePoint shared document library folder using UNC path. I mean by UNC something like this path “\\ServerName\Sites\Documents”. the weird thing is I was able to access the UNC path from my Windows 7 PC but not able to do that from Windows Server 2008. while I am able to get into windows shared folders (Ordinary shared folders ) from my Windows Server 2008 machine. The only different thing between those 2 shared folders is the document library shared by SharePoint server which means it is not a real shared folders, it is shared through Web folders. In order to access the web folder you need to have WebClient service installed and running on the machine which you want to access the web folder from it. by default Windows Server 2008 does not have that service installed there. thus you need to install it. to install the WebClient on Windows server 2008 , do the followings:
1. Start the server manager on your server
2. Select the Feature node from the left hand side nodes.
3. On right hand side, select Add Feature.
4. On the popup screen, select “Desktop Experience” checkbox then click on Next.
5. Click on Install, the installation process will take like 5 min (that depends on server hardware)
6. After installation process finish, close the dialog box
7. After installing the Service, you need to restart your server.
After completing the above steps, you will be able to access your SharePoint shared folder (the WebFolders) by using the UNC Path.