grub error 17 cannot mount selected partition (past posts checked still deosn't work)

jieyunfu · 05-05-2008, 08:26 PM

my machine is XP + ubuntu

for some reason, my grub failed to identify my hard drive, and it displays "grub loading... error 17" and I can enter neither system. so I use live CD to boot the system, and try to restore the grub.

I type:

sudo grub
find /boot/grub/stage1 // here I got a "floating point exception" no past posts talk about how to handle it...

so I directly root (hd0,6) {where my ubuntu is installed}, and setup (hd0)

but now, I can boot xp, but still, when trying to enter ubuntu, I met "error 17, cannout mount selected partition"...

I am thinking of re-installing ubuntu, but is it going to eat another part of my hard-drive as swap? I am not familiar with the re-installation process of ubuntu. is it possible to solve this problem without re-installation?

is any way to solve this problem? thank!

Simon Bridge · 05-06-2008, 01:14 AM

Quote:

[/b]17 : "Invalid device requested"[b]
This error is returned if a device string is recognizable but does not fall under the other device errors.

http://www.uruk.org/orig-grub/errors.html

This problem can occur if the incorrect initrd is selected...
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=133194
... or the incorrect root/boot partition.

Whatever - to diagnose this, we need to see that menu.lst as well as the output of fdisk -l

When you reinstall ubuntu - if you want to go that way - you will want to select the "manual" partition option, then tell it to use the same partitions for the same things. But to reformat the / partition.