# GRUB > Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory

## noisebleed

Hi all.

I've just finished building a new Gentoo i686 (I want 32bit) system on my new Core2Quad processor. Everything went smoothly till the the reboot. Ater booting the machine and all BIOS messages being displayed the system falls into a grub shell instead of the typical grub menu. Then I type boot and I get the message from the title.

```

    GNU GRUB  version 0.97  (640K lower / 0K upper memory)

 [ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported.  For the first word, TAB

   lists possible command completions.  Anywhere else TAB lists the possible

   completions of a device/filename. ]

grub> boot

Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory

grub> displaymem

Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory

grub> quit

Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory

grub>

```

As you can see all commands fail the same way and the only way to escape from the grub shell is through Ctrl+Alt+Del.

Another weird thing is grub detecting upper memory as 0K (zero K). BIOS detected my 2048 MB DDR2 (one slot) so why is this happening?

I've tried to boot with another disk that has a already running Gentoo system and the same issue occurs so I guess this is board/BIOS/memory related. Or isn't?

BTW, board is a Asus P5QL-CM (micro-atx). If you need more info I will quickly report it.

If anyone has any suggestions about this issue please reply as this is making impossible to use my new developed system. Thanks!

----------

## vinky

Hi!

We talked earlier on irc about this. I have had the same problem before but it got resolved somehow on a way I dont recall.

Yesterday though after updating grub this problem occured again.Its the same symptoms as yours.

I have a experimental build of hardened gcc 4.4.1 and 4.3.4 on this computer. It seems like if I compile grub with gcc 4.4 it fails to boot,

while on 4.3 it boots fine. It doesnt matter if I use hardened or non-hardened specs when building so its probably a gcc 4.4 problem

Which version of gcc do you have? if its 4.4, try and use 4.3 instead.

I have yet to see someone else confirm this issue and google has been unhelpful

----------

## noisebleed

Hi!

Well, as I told you on IRC I've managed to workaround this with LILO. So using LILO I can boot my machine. But as the thread title is GRUB related I can't mark it as solved.

About your question: I'm using gcc 3.4.6-r2. I now it's OLD but this is a production machine and I've reached a level where I can't touch the portage tree and sync'it to up-to-date packages.

Thanks again for your support both here and on irc  :Wink: 

----------

