Emergency Help with my laptop!!

[Xueqian Zhao <xueqianzhao@xxxxxxxxx>]

I received my laptop today and tried to install debian. However, I failed twice that

First time, after installation, I boot the OS and the there was an error info that "[0.04s] Failed memory ...." while booting, but the boot lasted and then nothing unusual happened. After login, I set the source as testing, and then upgrade the system ( initial installation only includes laptop and basic options when installing), however, the grub was also upgraded from 0.98 to 1.98, and I kept both of them. Then I reboot and chose grub -> grub2 (or grub2->grub, I can't remember) and the 2.6.32-trunk kernel, and then the boot stopped (because I set quiet for booting, so no detailed info). However, ctrl+alt+del can work!! And I use this method reboot the laptop and really bad thing was the machine can not even find 
the grub!!!!!

I reinstalled the debian again and the same thing happened!!!

I don't know why and how??!!  The cpu is Core Duo T6400 and Chipset is Nvidia Geforce 9400mg which is also a GPU and 3GB mem. 

Could anyone help me??? I need this laptop to run cuda, and I don't want ubuntu(dangerous upgrade and should keep on changing the release) nor windows!! 

-- 
Best regards,
Xueqian Zhao

Electrical & Computer Engineering Department
Michigan Technological University
Houghton, MI 49931, USA
Email: xueqianz@xxxxxxx
Mailbox: 121 EERC, Michigan Tech U, 1400 Townsend St., Houghton, MI 49931