Curious!
If I follow the instructions in the link I posted before
BOOT.INI file for Win2000/XP/2003 on a working XP system - I can see the contents of boot.ini:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windo ws XP Home Edition" /fastdetect
However, if a follow the instructions and look for the file in the root of C:\ - even though hidden and system files are set to display the file boot.ini still is nowhere to be seen!
If you open notepad and edit this non-existant file i.e. file open-> c:\boot.ini the listing that I pasted above appears???? So the file is there.
I would imagine if you open notepad (or another editor) and paste the lines above and save it to the root of c:\ it would then exist. However I am not sure how the operating system would view it as it wouldn't be a hidden system file. The computer that this was taken from is a single boot of WindowsXP Home.
Also searching for "boot.ini" turns up a file called "boot.ini.backup" in the directory c:\WINDOWS\pss - this was the case on two computers - the first was the XP Home machine that has never had a problem booting and has not had a dual boot or other operating system installed on it. The second was on a computer that dual boots Vista and XP Pro and the backup file was dated 11 Nov 2007 (the date that I was playing around with the dual boot) - The XP Home machine the backup is dated sometime in 2005!
Martin
Not sure if this helps?