64-bit install of ubuntu 12.04.2 won't boot

64-bit install of ubuntu 12.04.2 won't boot

The disk drive on my 64-bit ubuntu 12.04 system stopped booting (2TB drive
w/o EFI boot). I am able to boot up the same OS on another hard-disk (3TB
drive with EFI boot), and determined my the contents of the /boot
directory on the 2TB drive is damaged (hence the problem). So I purchased
a new 2TB drive (WD red drive) and have been trying to install 64-bit
ubuntu 12.04.2 to create a new system.
Everything works as expected during the installation process, but the disk
won't boot when the system is restarted. The black screen displays the
following, then nothing further:
Loading Operating System ... Boot from CD/DVD : Boot from CD/DVD : _
I have two DVD drives in my system, hence those two lines. I have removed
the DVD at this point, so it is not trying to boot off the DVD.
I only have the one disk drive connected during this process. The SATA
cables to the other drives in this computer are removed during this
install and boot process, just because that makes me feel 100% safe.
I have downloaded and burned two 12.04.2 DVDs and installed both of them
with identical results. So the DVDs are fine. Every time I install, I
manually specify partitions. Three times I did not format with EFI boot,
and twice I did format with EFI boot (which should not be necessary with
this 2TB drive). Exact same results both times.
My partitioning is quite vanilla, and similar to what I've done before
many times. Basically, something like this:
16GB /boot
16GB swap
64GB /
rest /home
/ and /home were made ext4 while /boot was made ext2 (when EFI not
specified).
When I install again, and get to the partition step, it says the
partitions are what I made them previously, and shows a reasonable amount
of the space as consumed by files.
Any ideas why this is happening?