Missing boot.ini

[VectraMan]

My XP machine decided today not to boot. It said "missing boot.ini", but then it said "booting from C:\windows" and then "missing hal.dll".

I assumed this was the hard disk being toast. But I ran the recovery console boot config repair, and having fixed boot.ini it now boots fine. How does that work? If it could correctly find the windows install dir, why didn't it boot before?

Boot.ini disappearing, but everything else otherwise fine, sounds like something nasty installed rather than a HDD problem. Should I stop cancelling the anti-virus scan everytime it runs?

[ferret]

As well as not cancelling the virus check download and run malware bytes:
http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

The free version is fine.

It could be the boot.ini died due to hard drive fail so would be using disk checker as well to verify the integrity of the unit.

[RichardCranium]

I had this some months ago; it was either SpyBot Search and Destroy or AVG that had decided BOOT.INI should be deleted.

Sorry, I cannot remember which it was, but do not be surprised if it is some high-profile, popular, there-to-help-you software that is deleting your BOOT.INI.

[VectraMan]

Oh FFS.

I let AVG do its scan, and tried the malwarebytes software, but found nothing. Had a power cut this afternoon, and when switched back on missing boot.ini.

So I ran bootcfg from the recovery console (which inexplicably takes 20 minutes to scan the hard disk for \windows), and this time made a back up copy of boot.ini as c:\bootold.ini, and booted. Once into Windows, I cheked c:\ and both files had disappeared.

Much googling and I've found a forum thread of people with the same problem. One fixed it with a system rollback, one with uninstalling IE8, and one said it was caused by the Ask toolbar upgrade service.... AHA!

Yesterday I installed Serif Draw Plus, for a play, and that insisted on installing the crappy Ask IE toolbar, which I promptly turned off. Why anybody wants a third party IE search toolbar when there's a search toolbar right there in IE is beyond me. But it does seem it installs a Windows service that serves no purpose but to sit there and delete boot.ini and piss you off big time. Why on earth would they do that?

Uninstalled the crappy Ask thingy with Add/Remove programs and it's okay now.

I've also worked out why it didn't boot without the boot.ini. It's because of Dell's habit of putting c:\ on the second partition and using the first for recovery. So the fall back position of looking for \windows on the first partition wouldn't work on a Dell.