ha, ok, thx deerpark. looks like things r working again, and my msconfig has boot.ini in it now...
we'll see if that does it (it looks like it will)
the last time i ran the ntldr fix, it worked once, then i restarted to check it and it worked again, so i assumed it worked, but the time after that when i started it it gave me it again
looks like no boot.ini startup error message, and i restarted 3x to check things, using restart and shut-down start-up and it looks good. we'll see about my bad luck, but thanks to all the guys who took the time to help and look at the thread!
CASE CLOSED
