Comment 42 for bug 172937

I've successfully workarounded it, modifying the command line options for grub with

all_generic_ide pci=nommconf

and for grub

ide=nodma acpi=off

Anyway I added those commands to the boot menu that appears after you install ubuntu with grub, and such grub does come with an entry that says "ACPI workarounds" and in that entry the acpi=off is set but misses the ide=nodma so it fails.