Are you aware of the grub differences?
grub is "grub 1" i.e. version 1.97
config file /boot/grub/menu.lst
grub2 is "grub pc or grub 2" i.e. version 1.99
config file /boot/grub/grub.cfg created by rules in /etc/default/grub. The
latter file is what you're supposed to edit and then run update-grub because
if you edit the .cfg directly, your changes will be overwritten when
update-grub gets run next time (e.g. when there is a kernel update).
You might want to remove the quiet and splash parameters to see what's going
on.
