Cheers for the advice, it appears the inductor was indeed just for filtering and there was a (partial) short in another board that the boost circuit was powering.....
The circuit being powered is a ccfl invertor for a 4"tft display, there is no dead short but the circuit is drawing excessive current, I desoldered the fuse shown in the photo below and the circuit now powers up ok, now just need to fault find the inverter board.... What's the chances it could be a leaky capacitor ( they all physically look ok)??
Junkie