Ubuntu
grub package

Grub boot error 17

Asked by bluey

Now this is tricky one so bear with please.

On my desktop pc I had 320gb and 200gb IDE hard drives setup as Master and Slave. I had two Operating systems on the Master disk WindowsXP Home sp2 and Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. Both were working perfectly and I had Ubuntu as first preference in the Boot Menu.

But somehow something was downloaded in my Windows O/S which crashed the entire drive. In my efforts to do a "Windows Repair" I somehow entirely deleted my Ubuntu partion so that now when I start up the pc It does not let me into the only O/S left on the H/drive, which is Windows XP. Bios gives and error 17 "Grub Boot Error" and I am sure it is because I had ubuntu setup as first boot. I cannot reinstall grub from the live cd because there is now no Ubuntu O/S partition to restore and save it to. I hope this makes sense.

I need to get past this "Grub Error 17" to retrieve my files from the corrupted Windows petion.

Can some offer advice on this problem, please.

Thanks,
Bluey.

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Ubuntu grub Edit question
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bluey
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Juraj Lukac (hrasko) said : 		#1

Hi,
I think you have to remove GRUB from the MBR part of your master disk. I was not sure about how much is the MBR part in bytes so I searched on internet a bit:)
You can do it in two ways - from WinXP boot CD or from Linux boot CD. Check this short question/answer and be sure to use "bs=446" value if you'll do it from linux.
http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-how-to-uninstall-grub/

hope it helps.

Revision history for this message
bluey (stringybark) said : 		#2

Hi Juraj,

Thanks for replying to my question. With your advice, and information on the link you provided, I was able to solve the problem. Thank you very much for your help, much appreciated.

Cheers,
Bluey.