Grub error 17, Kubuntu

[mthomps]

Total stupid n00b here.

After buying a new hard drive, XP was being sluggish, and having heard about Linux's superior performance, I figured I'd give Kubuntu a try. Liked it at first and installed it to a new partition on the new hard drive, but after a few days became frustrated with the learning curve on installing new software. So I bought some new RAM, booted up XP from what I've now learned is called GRUB, and decided to stick with XP. I became greedy for that hard drive space that was partitioned for Kubuntu so I ...

... and this was my stupid critical error ...

... opened up Windows' innocuous little DiskManager program and casually deleted the partition that contained Kubuntu. (Or so I thought.)

Of course, GRUB's still sorta there I guess, 'cause when I go to boot up, it says, "GRUB loading stage 1.5 ... GRUB loading, please wait. Error 17." Then stops. Googling reveals that "error 17" means it can't find a partition.

Right now, I'm booting Kubuntu from my LiveCD. After trolling the forums for error 17, I tried typing 'sudo grub-install /dev/hda' into terminal -- a stab in the dark, no luck. I tried reinstalling Kubuntu on the partition which QTParted tells me still exists, but the installer crashed.

I can't load XP at all, and can't find my boot disk for it. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

Matt

[oz]

To remove GRUB, boot with a Windows emergency boot disk and run: fdisk /mbr

...or

Boot with the Windows XP installation CD and from the recovery console type: fixmbr

Doing either one should rewrite the MBR allowing you to reboot directly into Windows.

[oz]

Oops... just noticed that you don't have the Windows XP disk.

You should be able to find a suitable boot disk here:

http://www.bootdisk.com/

[mthomps]

Thanks, ozar. Is there any way to burn the boot disk to CD from Kubuntu? I do have a CD burner, but it's occupied by the current LiveCD. Will I have to burn it from another computer?

[oz]

I'm not sure how the Kubuntu LiveCD works but you'll probably need to use another computer to burn the boot disk, or borrow one from a friend.

Maybe someone will correct me if that's wrong.

[devils casper]

Hi !!

Is there any way to burn the boot disk to CD from Kubuntu? I do have a CD burner, but it's occupied by the current LiveCD. Will I have to burn it from another computer?

boot disk is windows 98 bootable floppy... you dont need to BURN CD... it wont work... just download windows 98 bootable Floppy software from site suggested by ozar and create bootable floppy...



.... casper ....

[cb3404]

I had a similar problem. I removed my Kubuntu partitions and reformatted them to NTFS. But when I powered off and on my machine, I received the Grub Error 17.

To solve this problem, I used the command 'fdisk /mbr'. Since the machine wont boot, I used the Ultimate Boot CD (Ultimate Boot CD - Overview) to boot the machine and for fdisk. The fdisk is somewhere within the folders of the CD (you need to burn the ISO image first to a CD and make the cdrom as the first choice in booting).