hobbsy

OK just so everyone can have a good laugh at my expense. This is sorted, the main reason I couldn't boot through the XP disc was because it was looping despite me pressing a key to boot from the drive when prompted. However, this particular PC has a wireless keyboard, and somewhere along the line it was being locked out when it came to it. Change to wired keyboard and hey presto up and running, followed the fix then from Microsoft website and up and running in 2 minutes. So no need to bin the HD

I have searched everywhere for an answer on this and it may just boil down to having to bin my HD, as the problem seems rather unique to me and not the same as all of the other issues. Put simply, I have the same problems as many others in that XP won't boot up and comes up with the error; Windows could not start. The following file is missing or corrupted \windows\system\vgaoem.fon. You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows setup using the original setup CD-ROM. Select 'r' at the first screen to start repair. I have tried to follow the various answers, however they won't work for a very simple reason, they all require a recovery from the Windows disc, unfortunately however although I can change the BIOS to boot from the correct drives and even though I get the message Press any key to boot from CD, when I press the key it loops back to the corrupt vgaoem error message. F5 only gives me XP to boot from but locks out the keyboard anyway, and the same with F8, although I can get to the options it is as though the keyboard is locked out and I can't use the up and down arrows to select any other options. I am well and truly stuck, any advice other than a new HD anyone???