I've had a PC brought into me that displays the following message during boot: windows could not start. The following file is missing or corrupted  c:\windows\system\vgaoem.fon

Although there appears to be no reason as to why this file should all of a sudden disappear, the machine was later found to be undulated with various worms and viruses. However, the problem is easy to fix.

First of all, reboot the PC and press F* for OS Choices and select "Microsoft XP Recovery Console". If the recovery console is not listed then read this...

When in the Recovery console, insert the Windows installation disk then enter the following commands:

(x is the CD drive number and y is the XP partition drive number)

cd x:\Windows\i386  

expand vgaoem.fo_ y:\windows\system

cd y:\windows\system

attrib vgaoem.fon -r

exit

This copies back the missing file from the installation disk. Reboot and try again. If this works then great. If not, you will need to rebuild the system files. Unfortunately, the recovery console is very limited so see if you can obtain a copy of pebuilder and build a basic bootable windows disk. Boot from this CD and select check disk from the tools menu. This will check all your system files and will copy back any that are missing. Should be job done.