Phil Schaffner wrote:
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I have seen this behavior before when the BIOS device order does not match what is seen by the running system. Seems that in such cases, running GRUB from the boot media also sees different device/controller ordering than the running system and can lead to GRUB being confused about where to find the stage1 part of the GRUB code. Either changing the device order in the BIOS settings (if that is an option) or changing the order controllers are found in /etc/modprobe.conf seems to help. In any case, check /boot/grub/device.map and assure that it matches what GRUB sees at boot time. Can check this with the GRUB shell "find" command.
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It's interesting that you mention this as it jogged my memory to a case that happened to me when I tried Fedora 8 recently. Since my system is quite a hodgepodge of drives when I booted F8, it detected the drives in an odd order. The OS installed fine but wouldn't boot afterwards. Upon booting into rescue mode I was able to make adjustments to the device map to get it to alter the way the system booted to match the way F8 saw it at install. It was very hit and miss and I just attributed it to being a beta. Anyways, my suggestion is to check all the drives in your system for said files as mentioned. If they are there, but not where grub is looking for you may have to make changes.