Increase the Windows Experience Index score to play those unplayable games in Windows Vista play.

Windows Vista has a nifty feature with which it computes a score to announce its capabilities, the Windows Experience Index. Vista calculates the Windows Experience Index by running a number of diagnostic tests to test your computer’s capabilities. The intention is to have a scale which can be referred to when you upgrade your computer and identify the factors that make your computer underperform.

Games also use the same Windows Experience Index to find out ahead of launching whether your computer’s capabilities are good enough to meet the demands of the game. That’s why you must have found out that some of the games cannot be played in Windows Vista. Sometimes you might just want to play the game no matter what. Well, before you plunge into figuring out how to play that game try this trick to fake your Windows Experience Index so that the games can be played.

Step-1: Disable UAC

To perform this hack you need to disable UAC temporarily. If you haven’t done it before learn from this article on how to disable UAC in Windows Vista. You can enable UAC once you don’t need the higher Windows Experience Index score anymore.

Step-2: Navigate to the DataStore folder

Navigate to the C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore folder.

Step-3: Open the most recent XML file

Open the most recent XML file on the DataStore folder. If you have many files on that folder try to sort the files by Date Modified column in descending order and choose the very first file.

Step-4: Edit WinSPR node

Edit the elements under the WinSPR node, particularly line numbers 14 thru 20. Focus on to increase the scores that are low in number. The SystemScore node has a maximum of 5 and all the other nodes have a maximum of 10.

Now you should be able to see the hacked Windows Experience Index. Play the game that wasn’t playing before and now you should be able to play the game. If it still doesn’t play try to fake the score again to a higher number. If you have any questions or comments regarding this please let us know in comments.