I have a few weeks old acer aspire one D270 netbook (Intel Atom D2600 processor w/GMA 3600 graphics and 1G RAM). As the GMA3600 support in 3.2 kernel (ubuntu 12.04) is a bit shaky I wanted to compile the 3.7 kernel on the same netbook. However, somewhere in that process, the computer just crashed, being unable to boot. memtest shows various memory problems, which render the machine next to unusable.

I suspect the culprit is low-quality manufacturing, combined with overheating during the compilation (although the laptop was on a desk in normal room environment), and related failures. However, googling suggests there are automatic checks in place, although BIOS does not mention anything about temperature controls.

Now I think the best approach might be to get a new memory block (probably 2G then), but I am afraid the machine may be of too low quality, and failing memtest may signal problems which originate from elsewhere, not memory, instead.

Suggestions anyone?

If this is only a few weeks old I would return it to the vendor for warranty/guarantee.

Thank you, TobiSGD. I have also thought about that, but I am a little afraid of getting another one with a similar problem in return.. I would happy to upgrade the memory if I were certain that is the problem.

Without testing with a new module you can't be sure that it is the old RAM module that is giving you the problems, it could also be a faulty memory controller or even a problem with the voltage regulators in the machine.

A short websearch seems to show that there may be overheating problems with Linux on this machine, so I would recommend to have an eye on the temperatures with the new/repaired machine you get.