reoccuring grub error 17

[ejames82]

it's been about 5 months since i installed a dual-boot of xp professional and jaunty. the computer is a compaq presario sr1403wm with at least 1gb ram. about 4 months ago i was unable to boot because i received a message:


GRUB Loading stage 1.5.

GRUB loading, please wait...
Error 17


overnight, the message was still there. it wasn't going to boot.
i reinstalled jaunty and my dual boot was working again. the windows xp partition was unhurt. all the data was still there, unchanged. we lost data in the ubuntu partition, but heard about "remastersys" and tried it. i successfully make a remastersys disk. i actually (naively) thought i'd never have this problem again.

about 2 months ago, once again, receiving the exact same error 17message as above.
i booted ubuntu live cd and gparted called the ubuntu partition "unknown". i did a little investigating, and tried "super grub disk", but being a newbie, i really didn't know how to use it. i decided to try the remastersys disk. data was lost again, but found out the remastersys disk works properly. once again the xp partition and all the data was unhurt. the hard drive is less than a year old, so the problem shouldn't be that.

during those first two error messages, i'm not sure whether or not my wife upgraded to karmic or lucid. if she did, that may have contributed to the problem.

just last week, again, the same error message. i used the remastersys disk again.
again today, error 17. same message. i checked gparted again, and just like before, the linux partition is "unknown"

i also did a little searching for the /boot/grub directory, hoping for some info. i couldn't find /boot/grub.

any expertise in this matter would be most appreciated.

[devils casper]

Error 17 : "Invalid device requested"

This error is returned if a device string is recognizable but does not fall under the other device errors.

Something is wrong with Hard disk only. Did you have any problem with Windows OS? I would suggest you to check your Hard disk using Tools provided by your Hard disk Manufacturer.

Boot up from LiveCD of any linux distro and post output of fdisk -l command here.

[ejames82]

i will try that. i'll let you know how it goes. this should only take a few minutes.

thanks for the reply.

[ejames82]

i actually tried to post this earlier, but was on windows xp. let's see if this works with ubuntu. it was copied with gedit.



To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
See "man sudo_root" for details.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9d469d46

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 53216 427457488+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 53217 53338 979965 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 53339 60801 59946547+ 83 Linux
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -lu

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9d469d46

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 854915039 427457488+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 854915040 856874969 979965 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 856874970 976768064 59946547+ 83 Linux
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fsck /dev/sda3
fsck 1.41.4 (27-Jan-2009)
e2fsck 1.41.4 (27-Jan-2009)
fsck.ext2: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/sda3
Could this be a zero-length partition?
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

[ejames82]

Devils Casper,

let me know if this is what you requested. thanks.

[devils casper]

Boot up from Ubuntu Live and execute this in Terminal :

sudo fsck.ext3 /dev/sda3

Post error message here, if any.

[ejames82]

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fsck.ext3 /dev/sda3
e2fsck 1.41.4 (27-Jan-2009)
fsck.ext3: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/sda3
Could this be a zero-length partition?
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

[devils casper]

Try to mount /dev/sda3.

mkdir temp
sudo mount /dev/sda3 temp
cd temp
ls

Post error message here, if any.

[ejames82]

Devils Casper,

i have created a dual-boot with another (different) hard drive with xp and ubuntu, on the same computer. this would isolate the hard drive as the cause, but since it was intermittent, it could take months. it's only been two days, but the "new" hard drive is working and booting good into both os's.
i had to hunt down my hard drive testing cd's. will test that hard drive tomorrow, if it doesn't risk the data. i'd still like to keep the data intact if possible.
thanks.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ mkdir temp
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount /dev/sda3 temp
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ cd temp
ubuntu@ubuntu:~/temp$ ls
ubuntu@ubuntu:~/temp$

[devils casper]

We have to check if data in /dev/sda3 partition is intact or not. Try to mount it first and if it doesn't list any files, you can use testdisk or any other data recovery package.

mkdir temp
sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sda3 temp
cd temp
ls