I just installed Ubuntu (again) which also installed the GRUB boot manager. The GRUB does not come up when I boot my machine up, rather it goes straight to XP. This is an extreme inconvenience and I would SERIOUSLY like to use UBUNTU because as soon as I used the LiveCD I fell in love with it.
The HDD that has Ubuntu on it is Master, while I get my XP HDD to boot first. However, when i disable all but my Ubuntu HDD it comes up with Error 17.. I did research on what this means but to no avail.

HOW CAN I BOOT INTO UBUNTU?!

miickEe./

Ok. I installed Ubuntu on my laptop and I didn't have any problems with GRUB installing. It definitely sounds like GRUB didn't install correctly for you. I'm surprised windows is still booting for you. Did you have windows xp installed and then install Ubuntu? I'm pretty sure thats the way you have to do it because otherwise GRUB would be written over in the MBR and that would be why there is an error. Also ... how many hard drives do you have in your computer? Also...make sure that only one hard drive is set up as Master (if you know all about that just smack me ).

So I would just try re-installing Ubuntu... I find it pretty easy to set up overall and I've re-installed it plllllenty of times =D.

Hope that helps...let me know how things turn out.

Okies, here is the WHOLE story.

I have always had the WIndows XP as my original OS, with a flavour of linux on the side. My partition table and HDD goes like this:

WD 200GB SATA:
20GB > Windows (NTFS0
100GB > Games (NTFS)
35GB > Storage (NTFS)
35Gb > Downloads (NTFS)

WD 80GB IDE: (Master)
28.8GB > Ubuntu
1.22GB > Swap partition
Video > Video (NTFS)

WD 80GB IDE: (Slave)
80GB > Music (NTFS)

I keep them all in a jumperfree configuration and have my 200GB SATA set up to boot first in BIOS. Don't ask me why, if it works then I'll leave it. :P

My linux 'flavour of the month' so to speak was Xandros 3.0 Deluxe, which was pretty good but showed too many similarities to windows (freezing and instability). I decided after much deliberation to deownlaod Ubuntu 5.04 Hoary Hedgehog, and after looking through the liveCD I fell in love. Without hesitation I formatted my partition (marked Ubuntu, previously had Xandros) as to install Ubuntu. After that I installed Ubuntu and after installation it installed the GRUB bootloader. After a reboot to initialise the rest of the installation the LILO bootmanager (Xandros) came up. This was exceedingly strange as Xandros didn't exist on the drive. I went to reset my MBR, and it seemed that all codes for resetting it DID NOT WORK. I tried calling many other computer stores and it dumbstruck them..

After much deliberation I was told to reinstall Xandros so i could access it through the existing LILO bootmanager and type in a code to uninstall it. I went to the consol and typed:
"lilo -U /dev/sda(HDD located on)"
It seemingly deleted it. After that I restarted and instead of booting into Windows, it showed a message saying "LIL 99 99 99 99 .. ..". After that I somehow tricked my recovery console into resetting the MBR and then from there my SATA drivers were lost.. so I had to compile the drivers AGAIN.. and after trial and error I FINALLY found the right drivers. Then I repaired my XP and my MBR had fixed up.

Now, my present situation is that I have installed Ubuntu alongside an existing XP install (please note they are located on separate drives as detailed above). In my present configuration it boots straight to XP, while if I boot straight from the HDD where Ubuntu is installed it comes up with a message that says "Error 17". I have researched this Error and what it means to no avail. Is there a way that I can overcome this LAST PROBLEM for me to use Ubuntu?

miicKEe./

I would try to reinstall ubuntu and when it gets to installing GRUB see if there are any options on which drive to install it on. I would even try installing it on the SATA MBR. I think that might be what you have to do. I don't have any experience booting SATA drives though (I do want one though ). It sounds like you ran through the gammut as far as fixing your MBR though. Good Luck. Let me know if you get anywhere.

No worries. As I write this I am late for school, so maybe when I get home from work I might try. Is there a posibility that I need to change my Master/Slave configuration to help the GRUb loader? I think I have like an 8MB free space left on my SATA, will this be enough to install GRUB?

Anyways thanks and I will keep you posted on my progress.

miickEe./

what happens when you boot from the second drive, is it possible that grub made his boot record there?

(Set up the bios to boot from the second drive)

If nothing happens you have nothing lost, but a try.

CloudBuilder

All I can think of is that ubuntu isn't entirely compatible with SATA hard drives (or at least with installing GRUB on them). Also as far as I know windows has to be on the Master HD...no exceptions...but maybe there is a way around that. You should try installing GRUB on the other option (in the root partition of your install) and see what happens. That might work.

I think he said he already did that ... not sure but its probably above (yeah I'm being lazy).

Sorry for the delay in repyling, got back from work. Are you telling me I should make my Windows HDD the Master and the Linux the slave, or vice verse? What is the significance of the Error 17 when booting directly from the Linux HDD?

If there is any other alternative to the above stated methods than please feel free to email me at miickee_@hotmail.com.

Thanks mates

miickEe./

In the bios you can specify from which HD you are starting. You can change the starting order. Normally it is
FD - CDR - HD0 - HD1 etc You can change that to HD1 HD0. I was just curious if grub was installed on the right HD.

But if you get error 17, that is a grub error report.

To my opinion it has something to do with - the 1024 cylinder boundary, however a mate of me had a same problem. He solved it the following way (actually his drive was also 200gb).
In the bios he did not specify AUTO but the parameters of the HD and that solved for him the question.

CloudBuilder

Windows NT based systems don't have that problem. If you're dual booting with Windows XP it can be installed anywhere so long as it's on a primary partition (not an extended).

I'm having this same problem on my computer. I just installed gentoo along side Windows XP.

My setup looks like this:

IBM Deskstar 120GB
/dev/hda1 --> ntfs WinXP
/dev/hda2 --> ext2 /boot
/dev/hda3 --> swap swap
/dev/hda4 --> resierfs /

WesternDigital Cheapo 180GB
/dev/hdb1 --> ntfs Windows Storage drive

in gentoo, when I first installed I tried to emerge grub (since it's prettier) and it gave me error 17. I tried everything, and nothing would fix it. I eventually unmerged grub and emerged lilo and everything's worked fine.

I've since tried installing ubuntu onto the system as well, onto free space I made on /dev/hdb and it installed grub to the boot sector on /dev/hda1. Same error.

I fixed it by booting to the gentoo live cd (knoppix cd or ubuntu live cd should work as well) and chroot'ing into one of the active linux environments. I chroot'ed into gentoo and then emerged lilo and told it to install over the MBA on /dev/hda1

If you chroot'ed into ubuntu you should be able to apt-get remove grub and then apt-get install lilo. Configure lilo correctly and you should be fine.

My recommendation is to install from the ubuntu cd but say NO when it asks to install grub to the MBR. Then load a live cd of your choice and chroot into your newly installed ubuntu on the hd and put lilo on there instead.

Assuming that you're still booting from the SATA first and that you told Ubuntu to modify the MBR which would be on the SATA, then you might find the following thread useful. It helped me:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=13112

and for more explanation see mduduzi's posts on:
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-30242.html

Hope you come around OK.