I've always use lilo for my boot manager, I had it very well configured and even had my own design as splash screen...

but a friend told me that GRUB was better becouse of the capabilities (console, no need to overwrite MBR when adding another system startup) , so he installed it... but when the computer asked WHERE to install it... he typed "/dev/hdc1" instead of "/dev/hdc"...

/dev/hdc1 is my windows partition, when I choose to boot windows it just says "GRUB" in text mode, apparently he overwrited the mbr of that partition leaving WINDOWS with no boot

Is there any way to fix this MBR From linux?

don't think so, but if you pull out your windows boot disk (or get one from bootdisk.com) you have a fixmbr util

If you have a boot disk for your linux system, you can boot to a windows boot disk and type, fdisk /mbr. That will clear your master boot record. Then boot with your linux floppy and when logged in as root type, lilo. You should be good to go.

ok downloading images... wait a sec...

well , this actually overwrites the MBR of the entire Disk, not the one that I'm really insterested, so it just displays "GRUB" and of course, lilo nor grub is loaded... I booted from a Grub diskette now. . any ideas?

I made a similar mistake, or at least one that led to the same problem at startup. I used Norton System Works or Norton Utilities to fix it. (I don't remember, but if you search for me in the newbie forum, you should see what I did.) Basically, I had to edit the MBR. Whichever tool it was had some fix it utilities that did it for me. I happened to have those tools, but I'm sure similar utilities can do it. I never found a version of fdisk that I could run with XP Pro.

I'm assuming that you are using Windows 2000/XP

Boot off the install CD, select repair, recovery console.

The command you're looking for is fixboot. On a normal windows system, fixmbr and fixboot together will fix just about any initial boot up problem. If you want to keep grub (I'd recommend it) then you just want to fixboot. try:

fixboot /?

To get the options. I don't remember them off hand.

ahm... thank you everyone... but the problem was that the whole partition was destroyed... I was booting by WINXP disc in order to access to a console and "Fixboot" . but the partition was without system type, so I had to reinstall :S...

So a good advice for winusers/new linux users ... keep ALWAYS your stuff outside the system partition... that's way I'm not worried now ^^