Problems starting up my laptop...missing files?

Hi there guys, I lurked on this site a few years ago and got some big help for saving my laptop, and here I am again!

The laptop that I am having problems with is the same one that I posted about back in 2004. It is a bulky Panasonic Toughbook with Windows ME. Super old, I know, but it's handy to have an extra computer in the house. I completely gave up on it after years of problems in early 2005, and found myself pulling it out of my closet and plugging it in about a month ago. To my surprise, it started up! I couldn't open many programs and it was very slow, but it was a start. I ran ScanDisk for two days, which cleaned everything up, and I was good to go. I got a little too happy about having the laptop running again, and began deleting some programs that I didn't think I needed to boost speed and storage space. I deleted four or five and turned it off, thinking nothing of it. Now, here I am again, with a laptop that won't start up

I have tried to start it up in many different modes (safe mode, step-by-step confirmation, logged), but I keep on getting this same message:

wininit.exe - Missing/unable to load.
Press any key to continue.

I press a key, and I am then presented with the message:

Following file missing or corrupted: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\VMM32.VXD
Type name of Windows loader.

I have no idea what to do. Does anybody have any suggestions? I would just run ScanDisk again if I thought a file was corrupted, but I think that I deleted some start-up files, and I don't see how ScanDisk could repair that mistake. Is there any way that I can restore my laptop back to before I deleted those files? I know I made a restore point but I don't know how to access it.

Help is greatly appreciated! And sorry if this post doesn't belong in this forum, I don't know where else it would go!

 

It sounds like a repair installation of XP is in order.