Failed to boot Linux from USB stick

[Alexey Orishko]

Hi guys,

I can't boot Linux on Intel Atom 32-bit from USB stick on one
motherboard, but I can do it on another on the same type with
different BIOS version. I've read BIOS release notes and found
nothing relevant to the problem neither seen anything significantly
different in BIOS menu.

GRUB version 2.0

grub.cfg:
set default=0
set timeout=3
insmod ext2
set root=(hd0,1)
menuentry "Default" {
    linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.10.28
                root=UUID=d768c1f0-79c9-45c4-b604-8d0735a71242
                rootfstype=ext4 ro rootdelay=6
    initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.10.28
}

On the failed system grub is capable to show boot menu, but while
selecting it, it fails with message:
error: failure reading sector 0x57f650 from 'hd0'.

if I drop to grub command prompt from boot menu (without initially
selecting entry), and do some commands:
grub> ls
(hd0) (hd0,msdos1)
grub> insmod ext2
grub> ls (hd0,1)/boot
error: failure reading sector 0x802 from 'hd0'
grub> ls
                     # now ls output is empty line
grub> date
error: no such partition.
grub>

- If I connect the same USB stick to the motherboard with old BIOS,
  it boots ok.
- I can boot from SATA HDD with exactly the same root fs as USB stick
  (I've copied root partition with cpio and updated UUID value in grub
  and fstab).
- I can boot from USB stick only if it has FAT32, for example MSDOS
  boot disk or Ubuntu install disk made by Universal-USB-Installer.exe.

I wonder, what else do I need to check in order to get to the bottom
of this problem? Any help would be appreciated.

Regards,
Alexey