If you’ve tried resetting your Windows 10 computer using the Reset This PC option in order to restore your computer’s factory settings and the process suddenly fails for some reason and you got an error message instead stating, “There was a problem resetting your PC, No changes were made on your Windows 10 computer”, then this post might help you resolve the problem.
Carefully follow each one of the options given below to resolve the “There was a problem resetting your PC error on Windows 10.
Option 1 – Try renaming the System and Software hive
- If you’re still able to boot to the desktop of your Windows 10 PC, open an elevated Command Prompt from the WinX menu.
- Now use the CD command and change the directory to Windows\System32\config folder. Simply type in the following command and hit Enter:
cd %windir%system32config
- After that, you have to rename the System and Software registry hives to “System.001” and “Software.001”, respectively. To do that, just type each one of the following commands and hit Enter after you type each of them.
- ren system system.001
- ren software software.001
On the other hand, if your Windows 10 PC isn’t able to boot to the desktop, you can just access Command Prompt from the Advanced Startup options or you can also boot into Sage Mode and open Command Prompt from there and then run the given commands above.
Note: If you only want to use the Refresh your PC option, you must only rename System hive and not Software hive. On the other hand, if the Software hive is really corrupted, you might not be able to use the Refresh your PC option in such a case. Thus, you really need to rename the Software hive as well. Once you’ve renamed the Software hive, you won’t be able to use the Refresh your PC option but only the Reset your PC option.
- Type “exit” to close the Command Prompt and then restart your PC and try resetting your PC again.
Option 2 – Try to disable and re-enable the Windows Recovery Environment
If the first option didn’t help, you can try disabling the Windows Recovery Environment and then enable it back again. To configure a Windows Recovery Environment or Windows RE boot image and recovery options, you have to use the REAgentC.exe tool.
- Tap the Win + S key and type “REAgentC.exe” to open the REAgentC.exe tool.
- After that, type the following command and hit Enter to disable the Windows RE:
reagentc /disable
- After disabling the Windows RE, you need to enable it back by typing the following command:
reagentc /enable
Option 3 – Try to boot the USB recovery drive
If the two previous options failed, you need to try another workaround which is to boot to the USB recovery drive > Troubleshoot > Recover from a drive. From there, follow the on-screen instructions and you should be good to go.