Right out of the blue, my wife's Sony Vaio stopped booting. This, not so fun, error message displays immediately after POST:

The system cannot boot. The file is possibly corrupt. The file header checksum does not match the computed checksum

The repair option on the Vista DVD says everything is fine and dandy, it couldn't be more happier or more clueless...

Any ideas?

Update: CHKDSK reports no issues. CHKDSK /r reports no issues. (Heck, both Windows Repair and CHKDSK could just as well tell me that I have won on lottery or that the earth is flat... )

Some have reported that a mem diagnostic could help, but for me the mem diag has just ran through 5 passes. It doesn't seem to help.

According to Sony, pressing F10 should bring up the restore menu, but it doesn't, the error pops up straight after Bios POST. It seems that this error is first in line of all options at this point, and is doesn't put a smile on my face.

I have attached an external USB drive and copied all user data/documents to it. I feel an OS re-install is around the corner.