Hi, had the above problem and here's how I solved it. I had Fedora Core 3, ubuntu 8 and Windows Vista running on HP compaq 8710p. I free/shrinked space on Vista prtition as it was over 100G and restarted hoping to install Gentoo and got the Grub Loading Error 17, with no HDD. After few hours I solved it like this:
- Booted system with ubuntu LiveCD
- Mounted all partition
- Deleted and formatted Fedora Core 3 partition (as it the one with boot loader problem)and ubuntu partition.
- Reintalled ubuntu 8 on new freed space

and GUESS WHAT... IT WORKED. Now I can work as normal being at my Boring Job.

yeh this can happen when somthing borks the bootloader

norammly editing /boot/grub/menu.lst (sometimes called grub.conf) cna fix the problem,
then running grub install hd0 Where hd0 is your disk