Yeah it is grub because when I saw this weird "grldr" file in my C: drive I googled what it was and it said it was a grub loader. Then I searched through the install disk found the cmd file which was executed at the end of installation and it had details about placing menu.lst. Soo
And it's not technically "activated" as I said - because when you remove the grldr file Vista says 30 days remaining to activate it. I would think "pre-activating" means activating it and then injecting the registry tweaks changed files etc back into the installation so that it's already activated when you install it (or having some sort of cmd file to run at the end of installation which activates it for you) or something else along those lines.
/ 
