'/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found

I know there are a few questions in this already (error: file '/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found, error: file '/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found, https://askubuntu.com/questions/519463/boot-grub-i386-pc-normal-mod-not-found-in-grub-rescue) but non of those solves my problem.

I upgraded a DELL PowerEdge 830 from 12.04 LTS to 14.04LTS and found myself staring at the "grub rescue" prompt. (Funny thing is that non of the commands that should work, like 'boot', are recognized by the grub trying to talk to me...)

I used the BootRepair, which was a nice utility. Unfortunately it didn't help. Still "grub rescue".

Here's the link to its log if someone would be kind enough to have a look at it.

I also tried this and this, which are mostly the same. So obviously there is something differently wrong with my setup.

At the grub rescue prompt I did "ls" to ensure I had the partitions I wanted. I can see the 3 expected partions on the first drive, /dev/sda1 being marked as boot and ext3. Here's a session with grub rescue:

grub rescue> ls
(hd0) (hd0,msdos5) (hd0,msdos1) (hd1) (hd1, msdos)
grub rescue> ls (hd0)
(hd0): Filesystem is unknown.
grub rescue> ls (hd0,1)
(hd0,1): Filesystem is fat
grub rescue> ls (hd0,5)
(hd0,5): Filesystem is fat.
grub rescue> set
cmdpath=(hd0)
prefix=(hd0,msdos1)/boot/grub
root=hd0,msdos1
grub rescue> normal
unknown command ‘normal’
grub rescue> insmod normal
error: file ‘/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod’ not found
grub rescue> ls (hd0,1)/boot
error: file '/boot' not found.

Seems like grub thinks hd0,msdos1 is a FAT partition, right? fdisk (from a LiveCD) says its an ext3. That's causing "normal.mod not found", I suppose, since the kernel on a Linux system does not have FAT-support, which it shouldn't need...

This is our "production" server so I'd appreciate any quick replies so I can get it back running before Monday, thanks.

UPDATE: I did find a number of file system markings using wipefs (no, it doesn't wipe the filesystem...), but removing all but one (ext3) still did not fix my issue.

Biting the bullet, and many nightly hours later I had a fresh install and most of the data restored piece by piece from backup.

So, no solution.