pvcreate not overwriting partition table

from what i can remember, pvcreate should be unable (without "force") to create a physical volume on an entire disk if there was a partition table on that disk. something must have changed because now it seems it doesnt even check, and worse, it doesnt remove the partition table. what happens is you end up with a pv on the entire disk as well as a partition table on the disk.

here are some details:
[root@linuxclone root]# lvm version
LVM version: 2.00.15 (2004-04-19)
Library version: 1.00.14-ioctl (2004-04-06)
Driver version: 4.1.0
distribution: fedora core 2

pvscan shows 2 pv's, one on the entire disk the other on a partition on the same disk. how can that happen?
[root@linuxclone root]# pvscan
PV /dev/hda VG vault_vg lvm2 [37.27 GB / 36.27 GB free]
PV /dev/hda2 lvm2 [37.01 GB]
Total: 2 [74.28 GB] / in use: 1 [37.27 GB] / in no VG: 1 [37.01 GB]

[root@linuxclone root]# sfdisk -l /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 77545 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors/track
Warning: The partition table looks like it was made
for C/H/S=*/255/63 (instead of 77545/16/63).
For this listing I'll assume that geometry.
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *      0+     32      33-    265041   82  Linux swap
/dev/hda2         33    4864    4832   38813040   8e  Linux LVM
/dev/hda3          0       -       0          0    0  Empty
/dev/hda4          0       -       0          0    0  Empty