E000101F4 - again (HDD not recognised)

This seems to be a continual problem. Plenty of comments, but no guaranteed solution that I can see.

I have True Image 9 Home (and Disk Director 10.0), and have used them for some years quite successfully. Generally I use the Bootable CD created from them, not the installed version. Just upgraded the PC to a Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 motherboard with 500GB SATA Seagate HDD. It was installed with XP+SP3 straight off the Windows install disk, a 40GB bootable partition created and formatted during install. Later the rest was turned into an extended logical partition using Windows Disk Management.

I haven't reinstalled TI/DD yet, but I find that the bootable CD does not recognise any hard disk when TI/DD are run in full mode, but does in safe mode. With TI, it makes no difference if the backup is for the full partition or files/folders.

I've also tried downloading the latest ISO for DD 10 but that made no difference. There is no other AV s/w, no other backup software. All that is installed are the basic Gigabyte chipset utilities.

If I thought there was a solution in the latest TI/DD versions, I'd be happy to upgrade, but I don't want to waste money if there isn't.

Is there a known guaranteed solution to this that I've missed? There is some discussion about missing / faulty MBR I've seen, and there used to be an Acronis ISO for rewriting the MBR. I've got it somewhere, will that do anything, or be a disaster?

Comments appreciated - especially from Acronis themselves.