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questions
what is the configuration of the hard-disks? are they ide? or are any of them scsi or sata?
I'm not sure what to do yet, but i can suggest the following:
1. post your grub.conf here, so we can spot any problems
2. a google search for "grub error 17" seems to turn up quite a few articles which may be of help.
Good luck, and don't give up just yet - the solution is probably easier than you think
a bit tricky ...
Let's not upset XP, so you've got to set up to use ntldr.
1. Boot from a rescue disk and mount your Linux root system and switch into it via 'chroot'
2. Install Grub into the Linux partition, NOT the MBR - only the disk with XP should have a bootloader specified in the MBR (and of course it's ntldr).
3. make a copy of the boot sector; let's say you installed the Grub loader into the partition /dev/hdb1 - make a copy of the boot block like this:
dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=boot.lnx bs=512 count=1
Be extremely careful because dd will do whatever you tell it to do - including trash your entire hard drive - make absolutely sure you got the arguments right.
4. Copy your boot.lnx file onto a floppy or a USB stick or something; then transfer it to your XP's root drive (normally c:\ but I've seen all sorts of weird things)
5. Edit your boot.ini file and add an entry to boot via 'boot.lnx' - uhm... you'll have to look that one up because I forget the syntax for the boot.ini file.
6. Reboot WinDos and select your option to boot Grub - if all goes well Grub will then boot Linux!
What is happening is this: WinDos has one of the most inferior bootloaders on the planet - it can only chainload a bootloader from the first hard disk (usually named c:\ in WinDos). When you copy the Grub boot sector from the partition, that file has all the instructions to get Grub started - when ntldr loads and executes that file, Grub starts up just and you can get into Linux.