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After a bungled install, I decided to rewrite both drives in a WinXP / Mint 6(hopefully) dualboot computer.

I wiped both drives with a reliable Parted Magic cd I keep around. I formatted sda to NTFS. WinXP didn't like the Pmagic NTFS partition so I re-formatted from the Windows cd. I've run into that before so "no biggie." Windows installed normally (or seemed to) and I installed the nvidia driver and antivirus (AVG). I, then, rebooted the thing as requested and that's when the "Grub 17" error showed up. Up to this point no distro cd has been in this machine since re-formatting the drives.

Can anyone clear this up for me? Where did the error come from and do I have to do a re-install (of WinXP) to fix it? The drive was formatted twice. I wouldn't think that some remnant of a past install would have survived. Could it?

Thanks for the help. I gotta run. Be back after while.

bobpur,

When you reformat the drive it doesn't do anything to the mbr. Usually Windows install will wipe the mbr and reinstall the Windows boot loader but it didn't seem to do that in your case.

Download and burn the latest stable version of SuperGrub live cd iso from the link below. Reboot your machine with it and let it replace your Windows boot loader for you. That should solve your immediate problem.

http://download.linux-live-cd.org/Super ... sgd/cdrom/

Fred

Thanks Fred.

You put me on the right track to fix this problem. When you told me that formatting the drive left remnants of the former GRUB in the MBR I took a chance and run the "Felicia" cd to install a new GRUB. That fixed it. The dualboot is running fine, now.

I, also, found a SATA cable with a bad end and replaced it. I believe it was affecting the installation of the OS on that drive.

Thanks, again.