based on the fact that the crash never seemed to have happened with default screen resolutions and also inspired by the only other getmem usage in the code I came up with this simple solution which seems to work just fine. I do not understand why getmem seems to need this, but well - feel free to explain.

/*
 * Copyright (C) 2008 Remko Troncon
 */

#ifndef AUTOUPDATER_H
#define AUTOUPDATER_H

class AutoUpdater
{
    public:
        virtual ~AutoUpdater();

        virtual void checkForUpdates() = 0;
};

#endif