Asus p5b deluxe
Core 2 Duo e6400
2gb ram
7600 GS
SATA 500GB WD
IDE 250GB Seagate
IDE Liteon 20x DVD writer

Please help. I seem to have a problem with a hosed MBR. I searched similar threads. I'm a ubuntu feisti user, but this seems larger than ubuntu. On an unrelated note, this is the only box I have access to.

I was up and fine until yesterday when I ran the Sabayon 3.3b live CD, liked what I saw and attempted to create logical volumes with out creating a new partition layout on the SATA drive.

The bottom line: I was getting a grub 17 error, until I ran M$ XP console fixmbr. I then fired up grub to reinstall. No avail. No grub messages display at this time.

I've also tried reinstalling ubuntu (sda1) and sabayon (sbb1) to no effect.

I've gotten to the point were I'm certain that it's the mbr. I've tried to install to the IDE drive but I get a message, "The operating system could not be loaded."

I'd like to try mondo rescue but the dependencies for the live distros I have won't permit an install.

Here's what I've tried so far:
1. Creating new partition tables and reinstaling.
2. fdisk /mbr output: unable to open mbr
3. Again, I tried to reinstall grub.
4. also, I tried M$ XP console fixmbr ( First thing I tried. I'm sure this only made things worse)

I don't mind the slash and burn approach. Yet, I think that attitude is what created the problem.

Here's the latest output from fdisk -l

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 729 5855661 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 730 25044 195310237+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 25045 25530 3903795 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 14 30401 244091610 8e Linux LVM

Thanks

Download "Super Grub Disk". The name is hokey as hell, but it simply works.

Might want to check if your bios is set to allow writing to the boot sector. otherwise might need to download software to check drive.

Thanks for your help - Super Grub Disk is very cool.