Database Software

I am new to Oracle (I'm a MS-SQL DBA looking for a Full-Text Search solution that is better than linking to a MS index server.)

So - Here's the objective:
I have Oracle Server(Express) installed on a Windows server.
I would like for Oracle to build a Full-Text Catalog of the files on a separate file server based on file paths in a table in the database.
(No desire to store terabytes of images and documents inside the database)

I can get Oracle text up and running, using the URL_Datastore:

CREATE TABLE files (id NUMBER PRIMARY KEY, issue_id NUMBER, path VARCHAR(255) UNIQUE, ot_format VARCHAR(6), ot_version VARCHAR(10));

The Compaq server is a remote windows server on my local workgroup, so the fully qualified path is just "compaq" and the URL is valid:

INSERT INTO files VALUES (9,9,'file://Compaq/FTQ/00000003.pdf',NULL,NULL);
INSERT INTO files VALUES (13,13,'file://Compaq/FTQ/01.txt',NULL,NULL);

CREATE INDEX file_index ON files(path) INDEXTYPE IS ctxsys.context
PARAMETERS ('datastore ctxsys.URL_DATASTORE format column ot_format');

but when I enter:
Select * from CTX_User_Index_errors, I see the following errors:

DRG-11609: URL store: unable to open local file specified by file://Compaq/FTQ/00000003.pdf
DRG-11609: URL store: unable to open local file specified by file://Compaq/FTQ/01.txt

Did I miss something?
Do I need to install anything on the file server?

I would like to convince my company that Oracle can be much quicker than Microsoft's Indexing Service because it can avoid joining two large result sets (one result set from Full_text (indexing service) and one for specific data contained in fields in the MS-SQL database.) Full Text Searches commonly take 40 - 60 seconds where there are 1.5 million multi-page PDF files for a particular set that I sample search on. Without this massive join, I believe I can get the search to run in under 10 seconds.