Using the latest Ubuntu release. Gonna try a couple other distros and see what happens.
I second what GF was saying about repairing GRUB from the live session. Sometimes GRUB it gets jacked but it's an easy fix.
I've tried Ubuntu, Lubuntu, and Xubuntu. Lu and Xu are pretty sweet IMO. I tried SolydX a while back and it seemed cool. I'm a big fan of Crunchbang. It's neat. Very nice for older PCs. PCLinuxOS is also nice, it's my current desktop OS. Been using it for a while now. Might be time to try another.
I've been running the KDE version of pclinuxos for a quite a while now. possibly 4 yrs.
I use the lxde version for most of my dedicated projects and have Attract mode, advancemame, & patched mame .149 on a live usb.
both 32bit & 64 bit versions.
I have gauntlet legends for both versions of mame on it and I went around work booting up the many different PC's off the thumbdrive until I found a cpu that ran it.
I don't have one of the new EUFI motherboards but i remember reading on a forum somewhere that they had a legacy mode for booting up with a regular bios.