C# difference between == and Equals()

Question

I have a condition in a silverlight application that compares 2 strings, for some reason when I use == it returns false while .Equals()

Answer 1

There is another dimension to an earlier answer by @BlueMonkMN. The additional dimension is that the answer to the @Drahcir's title question as it is stated also depends on how we arrived at the string value. To illustrate:

string s1 = "test";
string s2 = "test";
string s3 = "test1".Substring(0, 4);
object s4 = s3;
string s5 = "te" + "st";
object s6 = s5;
Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} {2}", object.ReferenceEquals(s1, s2), s1 == s2, s1.Equals(s2));

Console.WriteLine("\n  Case1 - A method changes the value:");
Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} {2}", object.ReferenceEquals(s1, s3), s1 == s3, s1.Equals(s3));
Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} {2}", object.ReferenceEquals(s1, s4), s1 == s4, s1.Equals(s4));

Console.WriteLine("\n  Case2 - Having only literals allows to arrive at a literal:");
Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} {2}", object.ReferenceEquals(s1, s5), s1 == s5, s1.Equals(s5));
Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} {2}", object.ReferenceEquals(s1, s6), s1 == s6, s1.Equals(s6));

The output is:

True True True

  Case1 - A method changes the value:
False True True
False False True

  Case2 - Having only literals allows to arrive at a literal:
True True True
True True True