A Different Grub 17 Error

[lovejoy]

Hi,
I have a gateway mt6220b and installed mandriva to dual boot with vista
when i rebooted i got the error message grub 1.5 error 17 and can't get past it.
I did a google search and tried all the options.
The dvd drive won't attempt to read the hdd so I created a usb bootable vista which allows me to install vista but when I reboot i get the error message again.
so i tried fixmbr and fixboot - nothing
with gparted I:
formatted the hdd - nothing
removed the partition and left unallocated - nothing
The only thing i can think of is that Grub was installed to the cmos
but i can't find the jumper on the motherboard to clear it.
Can someone help.
ps
The hdd is identified correctly in the bios and and i have set the boot order to dvd then external then external stick.
I have also tried 2 external dvd drives that work in windows on this comp and also boot from my main comp

[aetiv]

Please clarify what you mean by "The dvd drive won't attempt to read the hdd". Are you refering to booting off of an OS disk in the dvd drive to install and it is unable to find the hd?

When you boot off of a Linux Live cd can you see the drive at all? If you can, then I believe the preamble on the hard drive may contain some errors. A preamble allows the hardware to recognize the start of a sector. The easiest way to recover at this point is to get a program that will allow you to write 0's to the hard drive. Then you can reinstall the partitions and OS.

If you cannot see the drive when running in Linux Live then I would be a bit concerned with the bios, motherboard, hd controller, etc... See if another drive will work in the same location.

[lovejoy]

When I run either the vista dvd or the mandriva dvd it doesn't attempt to look at the hdd but the gparted cd does.
I know the dvds' work as I can start up my main comp with them from the main dvd drive and the external ones and they are readable in windows.
I don't have another2.5 sata drive but will get paid next friday and buy one

[devils casper]

Boot up from GParted and execute this in Terminal

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1

It will remove Partition Table and MBR. Your Harddisk will be blank as new one. All installation CD/DVD will work fine after that.