Some Windows 8 users have complained that when they try to Refresh or Reset Windows 8, it throws up an error saying the “A required drive partition is missing” or “Drive where Windows is installed is locked”. These errors occur because the MBR or BCD records have become corrupt, perhaps because of power outage, system crash, malware infection or some other unknown reason. In order to fix these errors and continue to reset or refresh Windows, you will have to fix the BCD record and the MBR. You can fix these using your Windows recovery disk or installation disk. Here is how:
- Power on your Windows PC. Repeatedly press the F12 key to bring up the menu that lets you select the boot device (it could be some other key for your system – check your system manual). Quickly open the DVD tray and pop in your Windows recovery disk or Windows installation disk in it. If you have created the recovery disk on a USB drive, then plug-in the USB drive. Then select either the DVD or UDB disk from the boot menu.
- Wait for the computer to discover the bootable media and press a key when the message appears on your screen to boot into the Windows Installation or Recovery DVD.
- Choose to Install Windows from the screen that appears and then select Repair your computer. From the repair menu, select Troubleshoot, Advanced and then Command Prompt.
- In the command prompt that opens, type the following (pressing Enter after each line):
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
attrib C:\Boot\BCD -h -r -s
ren C:\Boot\BCD C:\Boot\BCD.bak
bootrec /rebuildbcd
- Now you can reboot and try doing a system reset or refresh Windows once again. This time it should work without any problems.
Conclusion: Its easy to fix “A required drive partition is missing” or “Drive where Windows is installed is locked” errors when trying to perform a system reset or refresh in Windows 8 or 8.1. All it takes is a Windows 8/8.1 installation DVD or recovery disk and a few commands executed from the recovery command prompt.