Does NIS 2012 replace boot.ini in WinXP?

I have recently been looking into setting up my Windows XP PC for dual boot with Linux.  In connection with this, I noticed several apparent anomalies which I wanted to follow up with the NIS community.  Since my PC has been protected by NIS since I last low-level formatted and reinstalled Windows in fall of 2010, it should have been in good shape.  Details:  My C: drive (which contains my system partition) doesn't have a copy of boot.ini, NTLDR, etc. visible in it (btw, I have hidden files set to be visible).  Instead, there is a binary file entitled "{811F5F00-E77E-4931-96B6-A18F066ED0AE}".  Despite the above, the PC boots up normally, and "msconfig" shows boot.ini content.  

 

Questions: 

1)  Does NIS replace the system boot files with something of its own (Meaning that the above is "supposed" to be this way)?

2)  If not, should I report this to Symantec, since this occured while their SW was installed and running?  How?

 

Thanks in advance,