What the hell is 'Error 17' ?!?

[dij]

Hi,

I booted from a usb pen and used fdisk to remove all the partitions on my system, then i started to install windows xp, i got through the first part fine, went to reboot and got 'Error 17' appear on my screen straight after the bios, i can still boot using the usb drive.

Can someone help!

Thanks

 

[scottro]

Error 17 means it can't find a bootable partition. It's a grub, not a WIndows error.
It may, however, indicate that when you installed WIndows, it didn't install properly.

Your best bet is to google for grub error 17 and see if any of the suggested solutions work.
(There may also be a very simple one for your situation--I don't dual boot Windows, so I can't be much more help than this.)

If you used the Acer CD to create the USB stick, then tried to install Windows from that, you usually have to completely reformat the USB stick to get rid of Acer's boot loader.

 

[dij]

Thanks, used a different method to install xp and it sorted it

 

[ed hiebert]

This error happens sometimes when you change the number or order of drives/partitions on a system after Grub is installed. I get it on my dual OS machine if I boot with a USB drive attached. If I remove the USB drive the system boots normally.