Win 95 OSR2/98/Me in a FAT32 cannot access NTFS partitions. Get 3rd party hardware to alter the contents, or read the contents. You could always try and put it in a system that has XP with NTFS and set the drive as a slave. I believe there is software to get 98 to read a NTFS partition, since your system is old you may not have this installed and will want it.
EDIT: I believe the reason is because it sees the old os on there and thinks it a dual boot system even though its hosed. Thus, it will have trouble reading the other table.