[tlug] Windows and motherboards

[Raymond Wan <rwan.kyoto@example.com>]

Hi all,

Yes, I know this is a Linux group.  But related to Steve's message
about his Windows and vendor experience...

Just this month, we had two old computers at work fail.  Both hardware
failures -- motherboard or RAM -- and yes, the computers were old
(close to 10 years).  So, I took the hard drives out and plugged them
into a computer of similar age (probably 7 years?).  I think I had to
switch them to Legacy from UEFI in order to read the drives.

Anyway, Windows started briefly and then I got a blue screen of death
in both cases.  Very strange for hard disks that should be working.
My only guess is that they were tied to the motherboard (something
that started with Windows 7?).  But the BSOD didn't give me a helpful
error message.

Why I thought of this while reading Steve's message is that booting
off a USB drive and/or swapping hard disks with another computer were
"standard" troubleshooting steps that we would do with a broken
[desktop] computer.  So infuriating that this no longer works.  :-(
Thanks, Microsoft...

Ray

* And yes, the computers in question run proprietary software that
connects to lab equipment.  We have to run Windows on them.