WTF is this?

[slu77er]

Merry Xmas to all,

I am running WIN98SE on one of my comps and am having a hard time beating an error that appears on startup. I have a MicroStar mobo (MS-6309) with VIA Chips VT82C694X & VT82C686A. Intel Celeron 667MHz proc, 256 MB RAM with Amibios V3.2...

On startup I receive this... "I/O read error" with an 'OK' box to click and nothing more! Click the 'OK' and it goes away but then what? I don't not know where this error is coming from nor how to solve it and I have surfed everywhere - I have registered with 2 forums other than this one - trying to find the answer to this most annoying problem.

I wish to upgrade my bios and ordered the flash from the manufacturer which arrived promptly with a 10 day limit on its use ( 3rd day today ) and it will not load...

When trying to flash the bios, while extracting the ZIP files I note that there is an error writing to file at or about 30% of the way through the process, all goes well then until trying to boot from the flash disk where I receive this:-

DOS4G error (2001) : exception ODh (general protection fault) at 1AO:0026F660

TsF32 : prev_tsf32 81CB

Crash address (unrelocated) = 1:0001C660

Any ideas, clues, hints or curse words that I haven't used would be very much appreciated, as I have mentioned previously, the 'clock is ticking' and I really don't want to have to send this 'flash' back for a refund...

Thankyou to anyone posting any response

slu77er