[en] The present study was undertaken to determine the direct ionization and electron capture contributions to vacancy production in the M-shells of ₇₉Au, ₈₂Pb, ₈₃Bi and ₉₂U for incident ¹⁹₉F ions. M-shell x-ray production cross sections have been measured for 1.42-MeV/amu ¹⁹₉F /SUP q/ ⁺ ions for q=4,5,6,8,9. Enhancements in the target x-ray production cross sections were observed for projectiles with one and two K-shell vacancies over those without K-shell vacancies. Direct ionization and electron capture contributions to the vacancy production were extracted from the data and compared to the plane wave Born approximation and to the Oppenheimer-Brinkman-Kramers calculations of Nikolaev, respectively