Why don't I see the boot.ini file when I run the Msconfig utility?

A. If you don't see the boot.ini file when you run Msconfig, the file might be missing from the system. To determine whether the boot.ini file is truly missing, go to the command prompt and, from the root directory, type

dir/ah boot.ini

When you run this command, the system will tell you whether the file exists. For example, the following information shows that the boot.ini file exists on my PC:

01/07/2004 12:07 AM 194 boot.ini1 File(s) 194 bytes0 Dir(s) 34,114,322,432 bytes free

If the boot.ini file doesn't exist, you need to restore or recreate the file from scratch. An example boot.ini file is shown below:

[boot loader]timeout=30default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS[operating systems]multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect