[mdlug] Grub error 17

[Stan Green]

I moved my wife's computer form SUSE 11 to Debian Lenny. I took a minimal 
install approach and added what she needed. I had it almost done, just needed 
to get USB working for a normal user, as I could only mount one as root. (This 
is not the primary issue now! I'll come back to that later.)

So, I was messing around with dbus and hal configuration. Nothing was working so 
I put almost everything back the way it was (I missed a policy section in 
hal.conf that gave her user ID the same rights  as root.)  I then rebooted, but 
I forgot to take the USB flash drive out of the port.

So up come GRUB error 17. My web searching turned up that error 17 is: "This 
error is returned if the partition requested exists, but the filesystem type 
cannot be recognized by GRUB. "  I do not even get to the GRUB menu. After 
spending hours on line trying everthing I can find, I am pulling my (virtual) 
hair out. Using Knoppix, I have run GRUB setup on the first hardrive, I have 
done the fidisk to fix the partation table. I have run fsck on both the boot 
partition and the root partation.  Nothing has worked.

So, could I have messed up something with dbus or hal that would keep the 
machine from booting? Could leaving the USB drive in caused some change?

Is there anything else that might be keeping GRUB from recognizing the file 
system?

Thanks,
Stan