latest MAMEUI (0.276)
Don't see the point of moving mame.ini outside inis directory. Always worked fine that way and now you have to copy it to that folder again if you want to launch mame from the same folder.
Also using only absolute paths is bad if you plan to use the emulator as portable, for example from a usb disk or pendrive. Please reconsider some of those fixes. There's no need to rush things :)