grub freezes at "grub loading."

[Jad]

I have a lenovo Y500

I am trying to install some flavour of GNU/Linux on it.
I tried:
 - Ubuntu 12.10
 - Ubuntu 12.04
 - Mint 14
 - Arch

I changed the boot mode to "legacy" (no EFI).
I wiped out the hard disks as I am not interested in windows 8

The PC contains two hard disks:
one 12Gigs SSD
one 1T HDD

I tried each of the distros above:
- on the SSD, using MBR
- on the SSD, using GPT
- on the HDD, using MBR
- on the HDD, using GPT
GPT partitioning scheme was done following the advice in the Arch wiki.

In all cases, and regardless of setup, I always end up booting in a
black screen.
If I keep "shift" pressed, all I see is "GRUB loading." (note the single dot)

In the case of Arch, I also tried an EFI setup which after lots of
pain finally worked, as I was guided by a nice knowledgeable guy on #archlinux
But it turns out my graphical card does not in EFI mode. So I am back
to point 0.

I've been googling for a week, but "GRUB loading." yields absolutely
nothing. I can't find a single person who has the same problem as I
have. On internet, people have advised me to try nomodeset etc, but I
can't access grub to change anything.

A good bunch of people have been really nice and trying to be helpful,
but in the end, all advice ends up being:
- check your memory (which I don't think applies, since the EFI setup worked)
- check your distro's MD5 (all checked)
- reinstall GRUB (reinstalled a million times)
- check that protected boot is off (it is, and EFI is off anyway)
- check that your hard disks are/are not in HCI mode (I tried both for
every installation trial)

People don't seem to understand I can't even get to the GRUB menu.
Since I was unable to find the exact string "GRUB loading.", it leads
me to think that GRUB is freezing while trying to write "GRUB
loading..."
But I am new to all this, so I don't really know.

I have spent now 5 full days on this, almost not sleeping. It is
driving me crazy.
I don't even understand how to debug this, since it just stops at stage 0.
Any kind of help would be deeply appreciated.

Thanks in advance for any pointer you might have