Help with Error 0xC0AA0301 trying to burn win 7 repair disc

Pulling my hair out here. Long story semi short. Im trying to salvage a Win 7 laptop and upgrade it to 10. The reason I am trying to make a win7 repair disc is the first 3 numbers of my product key are basically unreadable. I think I have them as I got out a jewelers loop and bright light and think I was able to make out the outlines of the characters. Anyway before I try loading win 10 and risk not having the correct product key, I made a disc image of my win7 and went to make the accompanying repair boot disc. It gets most of the way through and gives me the Error 0xC0AA0301. I have spent hours upon hours today reading googled threads and trying all sorts of stuff. The drive seems to function for all other purposes. The win 7 is a minimum install from the recovery partition now, but it was doing the same thing before I did that. I tried a couple things in regedit, I have tried updating the firmware, bios, etc. From all the reading Ive done it seems this is quite common in HP laptops. Any advice is appreciated.

Thank you for the response.

I have run Belarc but the product key it draws is not the same as my sticker. From what I read Belarc does not work for OEM keys. I have also run JellyBean to the same effect.

1) As far as the backup, yes just whatever is in MS, I don't see an option to use a different software when you go to control panel, backup and restore, create repair disc. If there is another way that would be great.

2) When you go into HP recovery, you can either repair windows, restore to factory new(with all bloatware), or restore to what they call minimal image (basically just win 7, drivers, and a few HP programs)
Note: this also occurred before I did the clean restore.

3)I did run SFC, I did not run CHKDSK. No I have not changed anything on the restore partition that I know of.

Paul Black said:

Hi fastmerc,



Have a look at OPTION 2 here => To Use "ShowKeyPlus" to See Product Key Number in Windows 7.

I hope this helps!

That seems to only show the same key as the other 2 and doesn't match my sticker with the characters that are readable.

SIW2 said:

If it is an oem preinstall, the key on the hard drive is no use by itself.

The COA key is different and can be used for reinstall purposes.

Not clear what you are doing.

Are you trying to make sure you have a win7 key in case you want to go back to win7 if you don't like win10?

It is my understanding you need the win7 key to do the win 10 install. win8 and up you don't need it as its in the firmware. But I mainly wanted it in case the 10 install fails for some reason and I have to go back.

OK so I downloaded the Aomei...made a backup disc image on a usb drive. Tried to make the bootable cd and it failed there also. What it did do was let me make it on another USB and after a BIOS update I now have the ability to legacy boot from USB which I didn't have before. So while it didn't solve the cd issue it allows me a temp workaround. Net I am downloading the ABR from the link above for a safety net, then its on to try installing 10. Thanks a bunch for the help so far.

I am happy to say its all good with Win 10. Still might have the drive issue but its much less important now. Thanks everyone for the assistance.