I thought this would be common but I can't find anything, maybe I just don't know how to search.

The blue HP image when I boot my laptop seems to cover the grub menu. No matter if I set timeout to 2 seconds or 10 seconds, it just waits at the HP screen until it runs out, then boots the default OS. I can choose OS normally by pressing up/down at the right time, it just doesn't show.
Some squares appear inside the HP circle when grub is loaded though.

I have tried toggling BIOS settings such as quick boot, silent boot (don't remember exactly what they are), and with and without EFI boot. Same thing.

Is there a way to fix this?

If you are having problems with the timeout, you could install grub2 and set

in /etc/default/grub.

Setting this value to -1 will cause the menu to display until the user makes a selection.

I also have heard of a weak CMOS battery causing boot issues, although I don't see why your BIOS splash would continue to be displayed.

You seem to have the hiddenmenu option set. You don't indicate which Linux you are using. If you are using a distribution with Grub Legacy, go to the /boot/grub/menu.lst or /boot/grub/grub.conf file. Near the top of the file you will see hiddenmenu. Just put a hash mark to the left so it looks like:

If you are using Ubuntu or another system with Grub2, go to the /etc/default/grub file and near the top change the lines near the top to show as below:

andrewthomas: there's nothing wrong with the functionality of the menu including it's timeout, I just can't see it, and thus have to guess which OS is marked.

yancek: I'm using Arch Linux, pretty sure it's the old grub. I don't have any of the lines you mentioned in my menu.lst, it looks very standard. The first line is the timeout setting.

During boot, if I press Esc I get a menu, where I can choose System Diagnostics, boot menu, BIOS setup et c. If I choose to abort and "continue booting process" or whatever it's called, then the grub menu shows!
Could it just be a badly designed system? Because the BIOS settings menu is the worst I've used.
It's a HP ProBook 4431.

I guess I misunderstood your situation. I have an HP also and when I boot I see the HP blue screen with some options for (5-10) seconds before I get the Grub menu with options to select. Is that your situation? If so, it has nothing to do with Grub but the way HP has the BIOS set. I haven't looked at the option in BIOS to see if there is a way to change this if that is what you are referring to?

After re-reading your posts, I'm not really sure what the problem is. In your first post:

That can't be changed in Grub. Do you see the Grub menu after the HP blue screen?

Yes it shows for 5 seconds, but seems to be done working after just 1-2 and proceeds to load grub while still showing the same HP logo. It does indeed seem like a HP problem, but you never know, I thought maybe there would be some setting I couldn't even imagine that fixed this.

Thanks for the tips.
I think I'm going to only have Windows 7 and run linux in a VM for better productivity, so that'll solve this issue, sort of. :P

I see the same blue HP screen you refer to. After that screen, I get the Grub boot menu. Don't know why you don't see it. The most obvious thing is the hiddenmenu option I referred to above. I dont recall ever seeing a Grub Legacy menu.lst file without it but I've never used Arch so...? You might try putting the line in below your timeout line like: #hiddenmenu. See what happens. If it doesn't help, just delete it.