I have a PC that all of a sudden started to tell me I had no boot.ini and said it was booting from c\windows. It boots, then stops loading processes at about 1/2 way, making my PC useless.
I have done everything rebuilding thru recov console, etc. but today, it said the same thing, but it booted!
The thing is, there is NO BOOT.INI file on this PC!
Running XP PRO SP2 for about 5 years without a fart. Then a major one. 🙂