Missing Boot.ini after a System Recover Task

I need assistance with what I sould do next now that I've done 2 system recoveries and not sure if I have my boot file back correctly.

Start up is taking took longer than usual to start up, resulting in a performance degradation in the system startup. Should I reboot into safe mode?
Michael

If you miss the boot.ini then you can't boot a system at all, but from what I read you just experience a performance hit of a working system. So this means that your boot.ini must exist.

As for your systems poor performance, that's likely due to software/drivers/malware that was removed earlier and has now been restored but making a diagnose without any concrete leads is impossible...

So do the usual: make a virus and malware scan and clean the system. If you're more skilled you can track down performance-hogging processes with HJT.