Modify the experience index rating in Windows Vista

When you open System Properties window in Windows Vista by pressing the shortcut key combination Windows Key + Pause ( you can also the System Properties window from Control Panel → System and Maintenance → System), you can see the Windows Experience Index number there as shown in the following picture :

If you are not happy with a lower experience index rating of your system, you can manually change it to anything you want through the steps shown below :

Note : You must have administrator credentials for modifying the experience index ratings

1. Open the Run dialog by pressing the key combination Windows Key + R.
2. In the Run dialog, type %windir%PerformanceWinSATDataStore and press Enter. This would the folder DataStore.
3. In the folder DataStore select the file with (Formal).WinSAT.xml in the name as shown below.

   

4. Open this file in Wordpad by right-clicking on the file, selecting Open with → Wordpad.
5. Once the file is open in Wordpad, make changes in the <winspr></winspr> section and change all the numeric values to any experience index you want. You can set the values from 0.0 to 7.9.

   

6. Save the file. Close and re-open the System Properties window to see the changes.