Apparently repeating it's name is how GRUB Stage 1 tells you it's trying to find it's brain (Stage 2), and can't.

According to the Gentoo Grub Error Guide, this is possibly either a BIOS disk detection issue or a reinstallation issue:

I looked into this a bit further, and it seems to be a common problem with systems that have both IDE and SATA/SCSI hard drives.  Most GRUB versions seem to get the ordering wrong unless the IDE is the first (MBR) drive at both setup and boot.  I suspect this is a BIOS extensions issue, where a disk controller reorders the disks at a late BIOS stage, but the MBR is scanned earlier than that, so GRUB setup sees one BIOS order, but GRUB boot sees another.
The solution seems to be to modify the disk order in the GRUB config and reinstall to the (correct) MBR.

Another source seems to be related to BIOS autodetect of disks, sometimes GRUB seems to handle this poorly, and the solution in those cases is to user-specify drive parameters in BIOS.

Links:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/grub-error-guide.xml
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/ubuntu-63/booting-my-new-ubuntu-install-grub-grub-grub-grub-grub-etc.-518849/

Here's a video, it requires stupid flash, however, so I can't see it to know if it is relevant or even appropriate (watch at own risk).
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ax9HrZJGDsE

der.hans wrote:
> moin moin,
> 
> what does it mean when rather than the grub menu you get "grub grub grub
> grub grub grub" repeating forever when booting?
> 
> Is that failing stage1?
> 
> I didn't see anything in the grub manual or FAQ about this :(.
> 
> ciao,
> 
> der.hans