Hi,

A while back I put in a SUSE Live CD into my drive and booted up properly. However when I shut it down it failed. Right now I don't have any linux distros installed, just WinXp.

Now every time I start up my machine I get:
GRUB Loading Stage 1.5
GRUB Loading, Please Wait...

Error 17.

This was a Live CD. I have tried a fixmbr and fixboot from the XP recovery console. I have to put in a bootable CD in order to get into Windows now ever since this has happened.

It happened a month ago, now I am starting to look into Linux again, so this is annoying. (It's a nice security feature though )

Any suggestions on how to fix this would be welcome.

Shane

Once you have Windows running you should be able to open a command line window and enter fdisk /mbr.

No I wouldn't think so. That's a DOS command (and probably DOS-mode) - and is the old equivalent of fixmbr.
I don't understand how a liveCD would install itself - mind you, normally I'd believe any screw-up of Suse.

As to why the fixmbr/fixboot didn't work, I've no idea - that should have done the job. A re-install (of any Linux) will (er, should) overlay the boot-loader and fix everything.
Hopefully ...

Yep. You're right. I just checked my XP system. No fdisk program.

Well, I tried an install of Ubuntu... It still gives the same error. But if I put in a bootable CD like before it continues on to the new GRUB (with Ubuntu and XP on it)without incident.

So the output looks something like this if I have a bootable CD in:

GRUB Loading Stage 1.5
GRUB Loading, Please Wait...

Error 17.

GRUB Loading Stage 1.5
GRUB Loading, Please Wait...

<<Loads Grub with Ubuntu and XP>>

This is really stumping me Would an entire nuke of the drive fix it? Of course I don't want to have to do that because I'm not ready to reformat and reinstall everything on my XP system.

-Shane

This is seriously odd.
Do you have any BIOS anti-virus options turned on ???.

From a Ubuntu terminal session, let's see the output from the following commandsThe first is a list of your disk partitions, the second is your grub config without all those comments and blank lines Debian distros insist on.

fdisk -l output:

Disk /dev/hda: 123.5 GB, 123522416640 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 15017 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 9795 78678306 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 9796 15017 41945715 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 9796 11070 10241406 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda6 11071 11201 1052226 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda7 11202 15017 30651988+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/hdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 2 19457 156280320 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5 2 19457 156280288+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

grep -v "^#" /boot/grub/menu.lst | grep -v "^$":
default 0
timeout 10
title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-23-386
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-23-386 root=/dev/hda7 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-23-386
savedefault
boot
title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-23-386 (recovery mode)
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-23-386 root=/dev/hda7 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-23-386
boot
title Ubuntu, memtest86+
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
boot
title Other operating systems:
root
title Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1


Hope this helps and I'm not running any BIOS anti virus.

-Shane

i cant say for sure if it will help , but i have used it at number of instances to
setup bootloader after deleting a linux installation that dualbooted with winxp
http://ms-sys.sourceforge.net/

its preeety easy and you can run a live cd , and run the programme in it , do as directed in the simple help (which is there) it should create a bootloader for ya
(windows only)