>>11
Someone else here.
First off, OP should confirm what the OS on the working computer is. If it really is Windows 95/98/Me, then this solution may apply. Otherwise, there may be other problems, like a corrupt drive.
I haven't used the tool from Paragon, but I have had good success with [
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/NtfsWindows98.html ]. It is also read-only. You will need access to some system files from a working NT/2K/XP installation, though, depending on what your original OS was. (Using XP system files should be fine for accessing NTFS drives that were formatted using either of the other two, though.)
BTW, these guys (Sysinternals) joined Microsoft last year. They are famous for having some very handy Windows tools, including a pagefile defragmenter, a disk cache flushing tool, and other filesystem tools like this one.