diff --git a/src/wp-admin/includes/schema.php b/src/wp-admin/includes/schema.php
index 95da444776..38df908d84 100644
--- a/src/wp-admin/includes/schema.php
+++ b/src/wp-admin/includes/schema.php
@@ -427,6 +427,7 @@ function populate_options() {
 	'comment_moderation' => 0,
 	'moderation_notify' => 1,
 	'permalink_structure' => '',
+	'rewrite_rules' => '',
 	'hack_file' => 0,
 	'blog_charset' => 'UTF-8',
 	'moderation_keys' => '',
diff --git a/src/wp-includes/class-wp-rewrite.php b/src/wp-includes/class-wp-rewrite.php
index 1107aa9d37..7c639990d1 100644
--- a/src/wp-includes/class-wp-rewrite.php
+++ b/src/wp-includes/class-wp-rewrite.php
@@ -1806,7 +1806,7 @@ class WP_Rewrite {
 			unset( $do_hard_later );
 		}
 
-		delete_option('rewrite_rules');
+		update_option( 'rewrite_rules', '' );
 		$this->wp_rewrite_rules();
 
 		/**