Multiple ionization and electron capture are found to be vital mechanisms for K and L x-ray emissions along with the direct coulomb ionization in heavy ion-atom collisions. Naturally, these two mechanisms may also be significant for M x-ray emissions also. However, these mechanisms are highly complex and not studied convincingly :yet. We, in this work, have developed theoretical methods to study these mechanisms systematically, which in turn, resolved the wide gap between the theories and experiments prevalent in literature. We have verified the present theory with the case of silicon and sulphur ions colliding with gold and bismuth targets at the energies ranging from 5 to 10 MeV. Here, we see that capture contribution is much higher than that coming from the multiple ionization effect. Combined effects of direct ionization, multiple ionization and capture give good accord with the measurements.