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I cannot boot into GRUB. I see this:

Alloc magic is broken at XXXXXX Press any key

but when I do nothing happens. Holding shift doesn't do anything either.

The last time I could use my machine I changed stuff in /etc/grub.d, but I chrooted into the system, reverted everything and successfully ran update-grub.

What can I try?

If anyone wondering: Ubuntu 12.04.1, Installation media was (I guess) 11.10, it's an i5-first generation kernel, 4GB RAM, memtest was okay.

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You should run memtest to verify, that faulty main memory isn't the root cause of this. – David Foerster Apr 6 '15 at 19:26
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A Boot-Repair Live USB can be used to repair Grub. You can download the ISO from the Ubuntu Wiki. Then, use Unetbootin to create a Live USB from the ISO file you downloaded. After you boot from the USB, the Boot Repair utility will pop up. Just click on the Recommended Repair button, and Boot-Repair will repair Grub for you.

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I did that. Changed nothing. It did give come "advice", but nothing which should prevent GRUB from starting, and nothing which wouldn't be the same since the original installation. – mrs_sheep Sep 3 '12 at 15:01
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This is not a software issue, The alloc magic broken error is a result of bad memory chips.

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I have solved this.

I used Rescatux and mainly SG2D to chainboot into my regular system. I then ran update-grub again and was wondering again why it would list everything twice, when it occurred to me to check the grub.cfg (just read, not write!).

I then found out that the supposedly "reverted" changes to the GRUB-config were still there preventing grub from starting.

(I had named the not-working ones .n for "new" assuming they would be ignored (like .bak))

SO: is it a valid bug to be posted, that reinstallation of GRUB does not clear the config dir?

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AFAIK, reinstalling packages typically does not replace or clear their config files by default, by design, so it would be a feature request if you wanted it to be changed... – Zanna Aug 25 '17 at 9:35

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