Yes, the NT bootstrap is annoying at taking over the MBR and installing itself regardless of whatever is already there. As you mentioned there are ways around it with third party boot selectors like Lilo or grub, but none are perfect. M$ also always assume Windows will be in the first logical partition on the drive, so it can cause annoying behaviour if it isn't, although most versions of NT will run. Win 9x OSs are a different matter, as they need to be C: and the first partition or they just won't work. They also need to be installed before attempting to install any other OS. But these days with VM's it is pointless running a 9x OS for real.