Desperate! boot.ini problem

My computer got the vundo.h virus, which is bad enough, but it wouldn't let me reboot into safe mode. My genius brother told me to go to MSCONFIG and change the boot.ini to safe mode to “get in that way.” So then it TRIED to boot to safe mode, couldn't, and got caught in a perpetual reboot loop. On advice from a forum, I booted from a disk and used the recovery console to rename the boot.ini file “boot.ini.bak” and this allowed me to get back into the computer and out of the perpetual reboot.
Then I was told to :
Open a Command Prompt and type the following and press Enter after each line. The helper “exagerated the spacing just so you can see where a space is needed, you only need one space”

CD \
attrib -H -R -S boot.ini.bak
rename boot.ini.bak boot.ini

Unfortunately, when I did this my computer said “file not found” and after the rename command “The system cannot find the file specified.” I was very careful to double check that I followed these instructions and didn’t hit wrong keys.

So I tried entering attrib b*.* at the prompt, and it comes back “File not Found.”

If I try to go to start>run>msconfig to try to get out of the boot to safe mode thing, there is NO TAB for Boot.ini any more.

I need to get this machine out of the boot-to-safe mode (and then tackle the vundo.h virus!) If you can help, esp. with the first part, please use small words – I am not well versed in this and the tears are making it hard to read things!!!

 

If the above does not work, then continue with mine.

So, at a command prompt, can you do a:

dir /as boot.*

Do you get anything?

 

Wow--you guys are fast, I wish I'd come here first. SOmeone emailed me these instructions, and they worked:

If it's one hard drive, and one partition, just use the boot.txt file attached to this post:
(This is a notepad file)
[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

Save it on your desktop
Rename it to boot.ini
Right click My Computer, click Explore
Highlight the C: drive in the left pane
Drag the boot.ini file from your desktop into the right pane.
Reboot.

Only problem is, there is a point during the boot where it gives me a choice of XP Pro or "Windows (Default)" and I have to actively choose XP Pro or it goes into another boot loop. Is there an easy fix for that to make XP Pro the default? one OS, all one partition on the system.

 

Someone physically helped me fix it. Thank you so much for your quick replies and willingness to help me out -- I really appreciate it!