i keep getting this error when i'm using grub. error 17. i always get errors when i try to boot to my linux. here is my hd partitioning:

hda:
hda0 - 80gb windows xp

hdb:
hdb1 - 1gb swap
hdb2 - 30gb linux
hdb3 - 130 storage

i've tried with slackware, gentoo, and debian. i always get errors when trying to boot to hdb2. even when i put hdb as my primary with grub or lilo on the MBR there. with grub i get error 17, with lilo i just get L 99 99 99 .... etc. i tried putting hdb into a friends computer and booting it, and it worked fine! i even tried flashing my BIOS and all sorts of things. none of them worked. what's going on here?? why wont it work? i tried removing my hard ware to just the bare minimum and booting and i still got the error. =/

by the way there doesnt ever appear to be anything wrong with my linux itself. i used slackware for about a year just fine, but i had to boot from the slack install disk every time because of these problems i described above.

-sagar pandya

Hi,

Just a few simple steps first and thats make sure that both your HD's are recognised in the BIOS.

Then, see if your current dist. has an option of re-installing the "grub" like Mepis does.

Hope that helps.

my hd's are fine. there is an option for reinstalling grub, but i've tried those. i've tried it for slackware, gentoo, and debian so far. here's a copy of my menu.lst:

when i looked at it at first it was saying "root (hd0,1)" and "root=/dev/hda2" but i changed those to teh values above and it still doesnt work right. =/

I think it is because the MBR doesn't point to where grub is. You will need to rebuild the MBR, and maybe grub, too. If Slackware/Gentoo (Debian doesn't) has a 'Repair MBR' option on the boot CD, use it. If not, use a live CD. I'd reccommend UBCD .
This is probably caused by you moving the boot partition, or changing it's number. If you can (from a live CD or Partition Magic) easily undo the partition operations, that might fix it, but you probably can't just move it back to where it was before.

i used the windows xp recovery console and "fixmbr" and "fixboot" on both my hard drives. is that the same as rebuilding my mbr? in any case, it never worked. after grub kept erroring, i tried lilo. it loaded fine without errors, but when i select Linux, it says "EBDA is big; kernel setup stack overlaps lilo second stage." when i select windows from the lilo list, however, it loads fine. somewhere along the line i had used a boot floppy to load linux. i used the slack boot disk to load debian and it loaded fine. the only problem was the kernel mismatch. =/

sagar

not sure if this would help or if you have done so already,
have you checked to make sure lilo and/or grub are pointing to correct kernel image? i'm pretty sure i got a similiar error when i misspelled something and had grub pointing to a kernel that didn't exist