suspicous part I see in grub.cfg.new is this line
linux /boot/vmlinuz-4.4.27-2-default
root=UUID=defa0a68-460f-4191-9bf3-9474608d42cd ${extra_cmdline} <?xml
version="1.0"?> resume=/dev/vda1 splash=silent quiet showopts resume=/dev/vda1
splash=silent quiet showopts
that xml part look wrong.