[help] grub [solved]

[Gediminas2]

My cousin phoned me recently. He said that when grub was loading "error 17" appeared, nothing more. He was dual booting kubuntu 7.04 and win xp. Now he can't boot either one.
He also has 7.04 live cd, i tried consulting him, but I lack the knowlage.

could anyone help me, so I can help my cousin? And please keep it simple, my cousin is 12

[Snowhog]

Re: [help] grub

Please refer to Qqmikes post here, as I believe you will find help within.

[Qqmike]

Re: [help] grub

If it was working, but now it is not, it sounds like he changed something, or something changed.

Start the Kubuntu Live CD.
When it comes up, open Konsole (K > System > Konsole).
Type
sudo fdisk –lu
and press Enter after it.
(“-lu” is “l” as in “list” and “u” as in “units”; space after sudo, space after fdisk).
That will tell you what his hard drive looks like – where Windows is and where Kubuntu is.
Windows would be NTFS.
Kubuntu would be Linux.

You need to convert the hda or sda to other notation, like hdx:

sda1 = (hd0,0) or it might be hda1
sda2 = (hd0,1) or hda2
sda3 = (hd0,2) or hda3

Now, take a look in his boot menu to see if it makes sense, using what we know about his disk drive layout.

Open Konqueror (the file manager, like Windows Explorer is the file manager in Windows).
In the window bar at the top,
type /boot
See grub in the lower windows now?
Click grub to open the folder grub.
Now find the file called menu.lst.
Right-click it, Actions > Edit as root.
menu.lst will open in a text editor (like KWrite).
First, save a backup copy of it in case he messes up accidentally:
File > Save As
And save it in his /home as menu.lst-backup, or menu.lst_backup.

Now, go back to menu.lst.
Find Windows. It will be something like
title Windows XP
or something like that.
Is the (hdx,y) in the root (hdx,y) line what it should be, based on what you learned from sudo fdisk –lu?
How about his Ubuntu? Is the root (hdx,y) what it should be based on sudo fdisk –lu?

I’m guessing that Windows is on (hd0,0), and Ubuntu on (hd0,1) or maybe (hd0,2), but I can’t be sure without seeing it.

So, carefully, by typing, make any changes in those two root statements.
Then File > Save and File > exit.
Close out all open windows, and re-boot to test it, which means the Live CD will prompt you to remove the Live CD, press Enter, and it will re-boot automatically.

Now, if making this right doesn’t fix his problem, you can try to re-install grub as follows:

Again, get the Kubuntu Live CD up and running.
Open K > System > Konsole.
Type
sudo grub
That will give you a GRUB prompt that looks like this: grub>.
At that grub>, type
find /boot/grub/stage1
Then press Enter. (“stage1” – the “1” is the number one; space after find)
That will give you an answer that looks like (hdx,y), probably something like (hd0,y), where y = some number 1, 2, 3, 4, …
Now, take that answer, the (hdx,y) that you see and put it into the following commands, pressing Enter after each command:

grub> root (hdx,y)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit
exit

where root (hdx,y) uses the answer you for from find. (Space after root, space after setup)

Close out all open windows
K > Log out > Re-start
The CD will eject soon, remove it, close the CD tray, press Enter, and let the PC re-boot to test this.

Thus, you have checked your disk (sudo fdisk –lu), you edited the boot menu (/boot/grub/menu.lst) as root, and you have re-installed the bootloader GRUB to the Master Boot record of the hard drive.

I can’t imagine that this will fail to fix this!
If it fails, we need to dig deeper.

Good luck, you guys,
Post back, either way.

[Gediminas2]

Re: [help] grub

Thank you for the advice. However I was unable to tell my cousin how to do this over the phone, as I could not see what he was doing. howeer I did manage to help him reinstall kubuntu. All seems to work fine now. thank you

[Qqmike]

Re: [help] grub

Good. That's what counts--that he is back in the game.

I would bet, though, that the reason the re-install worked was because it also re-installed GRUB to the MBR! and, maybe, also fixed something in the menu.lst, but most probably it just needed the GRUB re-install.

Glad you got it.

[dwr50]

Re: [help] grub

My cousin phoned me recently. He said that when grub was loading "error 17" appeared, nothing more. He was dual booting kubuntu 7.04 and win xp. Now he can't boot either one.
He also has 7.04 live cd, i tried consulting him, but I lack the knowlage.

could anyone help me, so I can help my cousin? And please keep it simple, my cousin is 12

Perhaps http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html will help.