Fix “Unable to Reset Your PC A Required Drive Partition” Error (5 Ways)

Why does “Unable to Reset Your PC A Required Drive Partition” Error Occur?

There are many reasons for the “unable to reset your pc a required drive partition” error, and this article lists a few of the most common ones for you. You can first understand the cause and then try the methods below to fix the problem accordingly.

• Bad sectors in the hard disk drive. 
• The corrupted or damaged system files. 
• The MBR (Master Boot Record) or BCD (Boot Configuration) has been corrupted. 
• Lost or inactive partition. 

How to Fix “Unable to Reset Your PC A Required Drive Partition” Error

Next, this article will introduce 5 ways to fix the "unable to reset your pc a required drive partition is missing" error, and you can choose the corresponding method based on the reasons for the error that you have previously learned. You can also try these 5 methods in turn, and I believe there is certainly one that can help you solve the problem.

Method 1. Run Automatic Startup Repair

The first "unable to reset your pc a required drive partition is missing" solution is to run the Windows Autostart Repair program to fix the problem. It will try to fix the hard drive and other errors and may get you out of this trouble. You can follow the steps below.

Step 1. Boot your PC into Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE).

Step 2. Click on Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Repair option to start the repair process.

Step 3. After the repair process is completed, you can go back to the Troubleshoot option.

Step 4. Then, click on the Reset this PC option and see if the error is fixed. If yes, you can follow the prompted instructions to reset your PC.

If this doesn’t fix the error for you, don’t worry. You can try some other solution to resolve the error.   

Method 2. Run CHKDSK

The “unable to reset your pc a required drive partition” error can be triggered due to bad sectors on your hard drive. For this reason, you can try running the CHKDSK command to fix the error. Please follow the steps below.

Step 1. Boot your PC into WinRE.

Step 2. Go to Choose an option > Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Command Prompt.

Step 3. When the CMD is opened, enter the command below to run the CHKDSK tool to repair disk errors.

CHKDSK c: /f /r

Note: In the above command, replace c with the driver letter of System Partition you intend to inspect and fix.

After the command is successfully executed, reboot your PC and then see if the error is now fixed.

Method 3. Run the SFC (System File Checker)

The corrupted or damaged system files can also trigger this error. In that case, running an SFC scan should be able to fix the problem for you. You can follow the steps below to fix the "unable to reset your pc a required drive partition" error. Please follow the steps below.

Step 1. Boot your PC into WinRE.

Step 2. Go to Choose an option > Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Command Prompt.

Step 3. In the command prompt window, type the command below and press Enter.

sfc /scannow

See if this fixes up the error for you. If not, move on to the next potential way.

Method 4. Run Bootrec.exe

A corrupted or damaged MBR (Master Boot Record) or BCD (Boot Configuration) is another possible cause of this error. So, you can repair MBR using Windows inbuilt feature and see if that fixes the error for you. You can follow the steps below.

Step 1. Open the Command Prompt in WinRE as we did before.

Step 2. Go to Choose an option > Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Command Prompt.

Step 3. Next, enter the commands below one by one in the CMD. Each time you finish typing a command line, you need to press Enter to execute it.

• bootrec /scanos
• bootrec /fixmbr
• bootrec /fixboot
• bootrec /rebuildbcd

Now, try restarting your PC and see if the error is now fixed.

Method 5. Set Partition to Active Partition

Only one partition can be designated as "Active" and that should be your system partition. If you have assigned the active partition wrongly, your PC won't boot and you may encounter the “unable to reset your pc a required drive partition” error.

In that case, you can try changing the active partition to resolve the problem. To set your system partition as active, you'll need to boot your PC up from a Windows installation disk first, then enter Command Prompt and use some command lines to set the system partition as active. You can follow the steps below.

Step 1. Insert Windows installation disk (DVD) into your PC and restart the computer.

Step 2. Press the F2/F12/Del key to enter the BIOS boot menu.

Step 3. Select the Windows installation USB or the DVD as the boot drive from the boot menu.

Step 4. Reboot the PC and wait for the computer to boot into the Windows Installation or Recovery DVD.

Step 5. When the Install Windows screen appears, select Repair your computer to enter the WinRE.

Step 6. From the repair menu, select Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > Command Prompt.

Step 7. Type the following command lines in order and hit Enter each time to fix the error.

• diskpart
• list disk
• select disk 0 (the disk contains your system partition)
• list partition
• select partition 0 (the system partition)
• active
• exit

The Best Solution to Protect Your System from Error

Resetting your computer will erase the data. When you encounter the “unable to reset your pc a required drive partition” error and try to solve it, you may also encounter the situation of data loss due to operation error.  

To better protect your data, we recommend you to make a backup of your system with the free backup software AOMEI Backupper Standard before resetting. When you encounter any trouble, you don't need to worry about data loss, and you can use this system backup for quick restore. This software offers System Backup, Disk Backup and Partition Backup to protect your data in all aspects. And it also has the advantages below.

• Schedule backup: It allows you to backup your system regularly with fixed intervals, such as Daily, Weekly and Monthly.
• Incremental backup: It supports backup only changed parts with the incremental backup method, so you don't need to backup the entire system every time.
• Different destination paths: You can backup your system to different backup destinations, such as external hard drive, USB flash drive, network drive, cloud drive, NAS, etc.
• Great compatibility: It supports all editions of Windows 10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP, both 32bit and 64bit.
• Easy to operate: It has a concise interface, so you can easily get a system backup done even if you use it for the first time.

Then you can follow the graphic tutorial to backup your system with just a few clicks.

Step 1. Download AOMEI Backupper Standard, install and launch it. Then you can click Backup > System Backup.

Step 2. It will select Windows system partition and boot-related partitions automatically. And you just need to select a destination for your system backup.

Step 3. Click Start Backup to backup your system easily.

Notes:

• Options: It allows you to enable email notification as well as choose the compression level for your system backup.
• Schedule Backup: You can perform the scheduled backup with different frequencies including Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Event trigger and USB plug in. And the last two are available in the Pro version.
• Backup Scheme: You can choose different backup methods (Full backup, Incremental backup or Differential backup). You can also enable automatic backup cleanup feature. And this feature and the last two backup methods are available in AOMEI Backupper Professional and higher versions.

Besides, it is also an excellent restore software that can help you restore your system backup image quickly. Even if you want to restore your system backup to a computer with different hardware, its Universal Restore feature will achieve the goal easily. You can download this software to explore more features.

Summary

This article describes the causes of the “unable to reset your pc a required drive partition” error and 5 different ways to fix it. If you receive such an error message when resetting your computer, you can use the 5 methods mentioned in the article to help you solve the problem.

To avoid data loss caused by resetting your computer and operational errors when fixing the problem, we recommend you to backup your system regularly with the free backup software AOMEI Backupper Standard. It will not only protect your data from being lost, but also you can use this system backup to restore your system in time when there is trouble.