Grub Error 17? Any ideas guys?

Well error 17 means that a partition could not be mounted. And if you can't even boot from CD, you don't have much hope of fixing it.

Check the following:
- loose IDE, drive power cables
- BIOS settings which would prevent you from booting from a CD - boot order, boot sources, etc

Once you can boot from CD, you can at least look at what partitions it thinks it has.

One question. Before you left for vacation, did you restart the machine after the successful install? Did it boot then?

Please open a terminal from menu Applications->Accessories->Terminal
and type:
sudo fdisk -l
-l ( is lower L)
copy and paste here the result here

Then type:
sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
copy and paste the file contents here.

Guys, I would have tried to get to at least a boot menu or terminal, but as Ergosys said, there might not be much hope of fixing it. I do know that I have my boot order set the right way, but I still can't get to anything.

grub error 17 "Cannot mount selected partition" happens usually because the "root" argument given to grub is wrong. At the grub menu, press 'e' and check the "root (hd0,2)" or similar line. You can go into command mode with 'c' and use the 'find' command to locate the right partition, for instance: find /boot/grub/menu.lst

Once you have found the right (hdx,y) partition, edit the root line in the grub menu. After booting up, edit the #groot= line in /boot/grub/menu.lst and run 'sudo update-grub'.

i have seen this error where the drive linux is installed to is using a GUID Partition Table (GPT)
To resolve this you can reinstall and when asked to delete the disk choose manual and let it start with a new partition table. You can then let the system create the partitions for you and will be able to boot upon restart :)

i had the same problem today. grub error 17. from my experiece i want say that grub has a weak point. grub do not work properly if when we install grub on new system hdd was /dev/hda (for example) but when we started our new system hdd became /dev/hdc.

i usually repair this stupid situation by using next method:

1. install problem hdd exactly at the position from that you will boot it. for example /dev/hdc

2. boot from rescue cd. for example fedora core rescue cd or something like that.

3. mount problem hdd at some catalog
#mkdir /1
# mount /dev/hdc3 /1
#mount /dev/hda2 /1/boot

4. exec grub from PROBLEM hdd but do not do chroot
# /1/usr/sbin/grub

that`all. i was repairing today two hdd with the same problem.
:)

remark:

 #mount /dev/hda2 /1/boot - mistake
 #mount /dev/hdC2 /1/boot - true