Not having seen a reply to your message in 30 days, did you find the
'problem'?

If you are truly just swapping the motherboards, not the hard drives,
the problem is likely that windows is setup for the hardware it is
used to, and when you swap them, it doesn't tell you the difference
and then gags on the different hardware configuration. If they are
PCI
boards, this is most likely the problem. If you don't have identical
video adapters, here again is a sticking point.

The difference between the older ISA & VLB boards was little if
anything. Video adapters can 'work' because windows may fall back to
a default setup, maybe not even warning you of the incorrect
configuration. The newer motherboards are vastly different. The
'generic' motherboards are better and the proprietary boards vary
incredibly.

The solution: Assuming you can get to windows as you indicated, run
the 'Add New Hardware' in the control panel and let it 'autodetect'
the system. At the end there is a 'Details' button that will list
the
changes. You may be amazed at the differences. Also, in the Pentium
boards, the changes are larger depending on chipsets.
Chipset-specific drivers may be needed. Last, if you are 'dumbing
down' a drive that has been running a pentium or later PCI 486 board
to an older 486 ISA bus board, windows will likely have a fit in
detection and tell you have to reload windows entirely! Stay calm
...
start the hardware search process over again and most often a 'Plug
and Play BIOS' will be removed and all settles down.

MS Plug and Pray is remarkably adaptive, but you have to do the
hardware search and of course reboot to get everything in line. I
did
this between two very different Win98-2 laptops recently and Win98-2
detected everything on the first boot and pulled everything off the
CD
and booted perfectly (lucky probably).

You mentioned Linux, and if Linux booted to the KDE GUI in either
place you were more than lucky. Linux can gag on just a different
mouse. Linux is more stable because it has a very narrow hardware
tolerance. I'm not knocking Linux, just understand the limits it
presents.

cyber
--------------------

--- In aplus@egroups.com, abear27@c... wrote:
> Here's a problem I ran into that I found "wierd",
> maybe someone can suggest an answer;
>
> I have 2 motherboards and cases. Board A is an ASUS motherboard and
> came with Case A. Board B looks like an ASUS, but I can't find a
part
> number, and came with Case B.
>
> When these motherboard are in their original cases, A with A and B
with B,
> everthing runs properly. When I swap the cases and put board A
into
case B, or
> board B into case A, they won't work properly. While both boards
usually make
> it through the POST, when the OS starts booting, whether it's
Windows or Linux,
> it craps out and the machine freezes up. Also, when I punch RESET,
the system
> won't reboot and I have to do a manual power reset.
>
> At first I thought it mught be bad RAM or the grounding of the
case,
but then
> why would they work in their original case, but not the opposite ???
>
> I spent a week trying to figure this out, but when it came down to
it, I just
> couldn't swap the cases and get them working properly.
>
> If anyone has any thoughts, send them in.. :)