mounting a windows share on a lab using 10.9 (SMB issues)

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Hi fellas, new to the site but hopefully I can contribute in the future. We currently have a middle school lab full of iMacs on 10.9 and a windows share that used to connect via SMB. 10.9 and SMB don't play well, but imaging cannot happen until next year. Historically, I have had these computers in a group in WGM with the preference to auto mount the SMB directory upon login. I wanted to change this to CIFS until the end of the year but cannot figure out how. If I make a CIFS connection on the server and then drag that into the login items in WGM it simply turns it into a SMB connection. If I make a CIFS://xxxxxx/xxxxx in safari and drag/drop the shortcut, it screws up the formatting and does not mount.

 

I know upgrading to 10.10 is the ultimate answer, but what can one do if that's not an immediate option?