Grub error 17

July 19th, 2008 by whit3kr0w

Ubuntu

Last weekend I decided to clean up my computer. No, not the dust inside it (I did that 2 weeks ago). My Windows installation was a bit slow and it was time to do a full clean.

I decided to install Windows Vista and Ubuntu Linux. It’s time to jump to the new operating system, I was still using XP. With Service Pack 1 and software houses already optimizing their software for Vista I think it is now the time to install it. Regarding Linux, from all the distributions available, I think Ubuntu is the best one for me. Clean interface, easy to use and update/install new software and good enough to use as a multi purpose server.

So, after I installed Windows and Ubuntu all was running perfectly. I even started to use Ubuntu as my preferred OS to play music, movies and to download from torrents. If you haven’t tried Linux yet, Ubuntu is a very user friendly that “almost” replaces Windows. I say almost because Windows has much more software support. So if you’re a gamer you probably want to stick with Windows (or buy an Xbox 360 ). But of course it all depends on your field of expertise and what you enjoy using. Some say Linux is the way to go, some say Windows and I had a friend of mine saying that Solaris is the one :P. I chose Windows and Linux.

Today I ran Media Direct (included in DELL laptops) and had an error. Running for a second time was ok (weird). This has caused my Grub boot loader not to start and to give an Error 17. There are lots of information out there about it. I actually spent around 2 hours researching how to get rid of it and to have my boot menu back.

This is how I got rid of the Grub error 17:

Boot from Live CD
Open a terminal session
Run “sudo grub” - It runs Grub with root permissions
In Grub prompt type “find /boot/grub/stage1″ - this will tell you where Grub was installed so that we can fix the boot
Still on Grub prompt: “root (hd?,?)” - Replace the ‘?’ with the values from the point 4 result. First ‘?’ is the hard drive, the second is the partition. This tells Grub that its files are on that specific partition.
Type “setup (hd0)” to install Grub into the MBR (Master Boot Record)
“quit” to exit Grub
You can now reboot and check if this fixed your Error 17. You should be able to boot properly now.

This has fixed my specific issue. If it didn’t help you, try reading the following articles which helped me understand what was going on. All of these can be found using “grub error 17″ on Google.