wood should autoboot on a r4i gold 3ds. Are you loading into the it's official firmware, then booting wood r4 in it? If you still have your old firmware in, you should remove every file for it and only have the wood r4 firmware in.
I suppose it is weird then? It was a fresh firmware install- I just got my r4i gold in less than 2 days ago. I saw earlier in this thread (wonderfully written and informative, by the way) that I only need the __rpg folder and _DS_MENU in the root of my SD card- and I understand that might be an earlier version of Wood? Now, is the WOODR4.NDS the problem?
And really mate, thanks for bearing with me.