I doubt the problem is in Grub. This happens when the BIOS doesn't support USB 2.0 at BOOT TIME, so it uses the slower 1.1 (you should see your hdd recognized as a 1.1 device when the system is starting). Once your OS loads, you have full 2.0 support, that's why lspci output is useless in this case, the problem is in the BIOS, not in linux. I know for sure that many Acer notebooks do this... don't know about HPs though.
I doubt the problem is in Grub. This happens when the BIOS doesn't support USB 2.0 at BOOT TIME, so it uses the slower 1.1 (you should see your hdd recognized as a 1.1 device when the system is starting). Once your OS loads, you have full 2.0 support, that's why lspci output is useless in this case, the problem is in the BIOS, not in linux. I know for sure that many Acer notebooks do this... don't know about HPs though.