Sounds like the drive may be formatted fat32 which Windows NT can not use.
To do a clean install, either boot the Windows NT install CD-Rom or setup
disks. When you get to the point, delete the existing NTFS and or other
partitions found. After you delete the partition(s) abort  the install, then
again restart the pc booting the CD-Rom or setup disks to avoid unexpected
drive letter assignments with your new install.

Depending on your drive's geometry Windows NT supports a system partition
(the first primary active partition and where the files required to start
the OS reside (boot sector)) limited to 7.8gB NTFS or 4gB Fat16, while the
boot partition (where the OS is installed) is not limited in size. You wont
be able to create a system partition greater than 4gB with Windows NT Setup;
if you need a system partition 4gB - 7.8 gB, you'll need to use Partition
Magic or use another NT machine to create the first primary active
partition. The system and boot partition can be the same partition.

If you created one large system/ boot partition > 7.8 gB and installed the
OS, it may work, but the problem is if you defragment the drive or service
pack the install and the files ntdetect.com, ntldr, boot.ini, and
ntbootdd.sys end up being relocated to a point beyond the 7.8 gB barrier,
then the bootstrap process wont be able to find them and the OS wont start.

Once the OS is installed you can use Disk Administrator to partition and
format the rest of your drive. You'll need atapi.sys from SP4 or later for
Windows NT to be able to recognize a drive larger than ~ 8 gB. See the first
article for the link and instructions.

Installing Windows NT on a Large IDE Hard Disk
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q197667

Windows NT 4.0 Supports Maximum of 7.8-GB System Partition
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q224526

Boot Partition Created During Setup Limited to 4 Gigabytes
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q119497

Windows NT Partitioning Rules During Setup
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q138364

Windows Me and Windows NT are pretty incompatible systems. Without proper
procedure you are not able to install them on the same machine. And you
should to plan this dual boot configuration before creating of partition
scheme.

You can repair your WinMe installation easily by booting from your WinME
installation CD (or recovery floppy) to console prompt and invoking  boot
record repairing command. For previous versions it was "sys c:", I am not
sure if this is still functional for Win ME, fortunately I need not to use
this command yet on a few WinME machines I have around.

Windows ME is using FAT32 filesystem that is unusable for Windows NT and
WinNT is using NTFS filesystem incompatible with WinME. The only filesystem
they can share is FAT16, but WinME cannot use FAT16 partitions over 2GB for
_system_ partition (WinNT can go up to 4GB physical limit) and 2GB is too
low size for WinME - it can be installed and run on it, but you will have
serious problems each time you want to install any bigger application or
system update - even you force them to use other partition, they still need
a lot of space on partition where windows folder is located to save common
drivers and shared libraries. And there are also some WinME critical working
files (paging file, spooler, temp, system autobackups) too hard or
impossible to move or configure. Win9x/ME based systems cannot force drive
letters, so if you made change to partition scheme resulting to change of
drive letters order, most of affected applications will hangs and need to be
reinstalled.

So if you want to dualboot WindowsME with Windows NT or MS-DOS you need to
prepare FAT16 primary partition (up to 2GB) on begin of disk and force WinME
to be installed on different partition. See following (basic) examples:

Scheme 1 (less used NT system):
C: - Primary partition used for MS-DOS and WinNT - FAT16,  size 500MB-2GB,
depending on what you need win NT for and how much space you need for files
shared between systems.
D: - either primary partiton or logical disk used for Windows ME - FAT32,
size over rest of disk (recommended to be at least 4GB).

Scheme 2 (more used Win NT):
C: - primary partition for MS-DOS and NT OS loader and sharing ofd files
between NT and ME - FAT16, size 8MB - 2GB, size depends on your sharing
needs. NT OS loader needs less than 1MB and MS-DOS itself like 5MB so
minimal partition size 8MB (given by disk logical geometry) is suitable for
them.
D: - primary partition  for Windows NT and its applications - NTFS, size
2-4GB created by NT setup, or more if preformatted  in other NT machine or
by using temporary NT OS instance in C: partition (in such case C: should be
at least 300MB). Note: if this partition for NT will end far than 7.8GB from
begin of disk, you should to provide updated disk driver file on floppy at
begin of setup using <F6> trick.
E: - either primary partition or logical disk used for Windows ME - FAT32,
size over rest of disk (recommended to be at least 4GB).

luck

George

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