Windows NT4 and Acronis 2009

One of my clients is a medium-sized steel manufacturer, with several industrial lasers for cutting and shaping.  These machines are all Windows NT4 boxes running specialized software.
Recently, they had one of these lasers fail to boot.  They hadn't used it in a while, and upon power-up got a "System Disk Error" after BIOS.  I take care of their servers and workstations, and this is a computer... right?  The nice guy that I am, I went to see if I could do anything.
First thing I did was pull the hard drive and create a backup using Acronis 2009.  I dropped the drive into an old Windows 2000 workstation on the shop floor and tried that hardware- sure enough, no boot and a System Disk Error.  Then I went to work with Hirens, apparently the MBR and/or file system were corrupted and not repairable with tools I commonly use for such problems.  I dusted off my old NT4 Workstation disks to repair the installation with no luck.  Assuming the drive was at fault, I copied that image onto a new IDE hard drive using one of the spares my predecessor kept around for such purposes.  No luck- still System Disk Error after BIOS.
Either the image was bad or the disk controller in the machine is at fault.  So, with no further options, I instructed them to acquire a new drive from the company.
It came two days later, priority overnight from the manufacturer in Belgium (that's how important this piece of equipment is to them).  The company blasted an image onto a brand-new drive that contains a basic install of NT4 and their software installed.  Taking it out of the box, first thing I did was create a new image, also using Acronis 2009.  I dropped the new drive into the laser and tried to boot- wait for it- System Disk Error!
At this point, I blame the hardware.  All proprietary and custom equipment, of course, to fit in the strangely sized operator's console.  So, they had a technician working for the manufacturer come out to service the machine.  I was not able to meet with him as I had other obligations at that time, but apparently he replaced a lot of hardware and got it to work with another drive (somewhere) and instructed them to aquire a 20 GB IDE hard drive and load Windows 95 onto it (?).  I do not know where he came up with that conclusion.  He was not available via telephone and I have yet to hear back from him.  Of course, my clients didn't really pay any attention to what he had to tell them.  Instead they were counting on me to finish the repairs.  Ugh.
So, I opened up the console and sure enough the disk controller and motherboard were shiny and nice, not covered in black dust like everything else in that shop.  I dropped in the new drive, and the System Disk Error remains.  I instructed my client to contact the company again, as something is still not working.  They are obviously unhappy, and the manufacturer says the machine should work.  But it doesn't.

Quite a lot of back story there.
So, what I was getting at is this: I would like to know for certain that there is no conflict with Acronis 2009 and Windows NT4.  I would hate to think I broke it by using new imaging software instead of an old version of Ghost, which is what I believe the manufacturer uses to load their images.
I do have a copy of Symantec Ghost 7.5, but I haven't really used it since I bought into Acronis True Image.  I have not had problems with Acronis at all, and I was wondering if I should try Ghost.  When this gets operational again, I am going to make sure there will not be a repeat incident by imaging the drives of ALL their machines.  Ghost or Acronis?

I would also like to know if I will have any complications getting that junker added to their SBS 2003 domain.  It needs to directly access CAD drawings stored in network shares.  I know it was set up that way before, and from my research I know NT4 with SP 6a will connect to a 2003 domain.  Will Windows 95, if I had to go that route?  A certain patch, perhaps?

I am in need of some direction here.  My clients want that thing back up as soon as possible, and my boss is no help.  He is not a tech so his response is "fix it and make them happy".  Frustrating.

Thanks for reading through that whole thing.  Worth 500 points in my book, especially if someone can help me to come out of this looking like a hero!  Greatest of thanks.