Comment 33 for bug 10712

You could try to use pre-made grub floppy-disk (of CD image)
The package grub-disk, in Universe, contains both images for floppies and cd.

Frankly, it should not work according to what you said, (maybe the CD yes however). But it would show that this is not just badly configured grub files.

Example I have:
$ ls -l /usr/share/grub-disk
total 140
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 67146 2006-10-05 06:50 grub-0.97-i486-pc.ext2fs.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 61556 2006-10-05 06:50 grub-0.97-i486-pc.iso.gz
It would be good to list these, if you try, to let us know which version you have (these are in edgy version).

Next, to make a floppy you would (it did not worked for me, but I think it is because my floppies are SO old & scrap):
cp /usr/share/grub-disk/grub-version-i486-pc.ext2fs.gz .
gunzip grub-version-i486-pc.ext2fs.gz
put a new floppy,
sudo dd if=grub-version-i486-pc.ext2fs.gz of=/dev/fd0
wait patiently, then boot with the floppy.

Or to make a CDRW or a spare CDR:
cp /usr/share/grub-disk/grub-version-i486-pc.iso.gz .
gunzip grub-version-i486-pc.iso.gz
put fresh CDRW or CDR
sudo cdrecord grub-version-i486-pc.iso.gz
wait patiently, then reboot with the CD.

Note that in the best case, all wou will have is a floppy or CD giving
a useless menu, but since what we want is test wheter you get that
menu or not, this should do the trick fine.

Also, it would be great before saying, it does not work, to try the CD or floppy you made, on an other computer if you have access to one.