Missing Windows Experience Index in Windows 8.1 - suggest restore it

Well wiz9,

WEI tool is NOT removed from Windows 8.1. It's still available. Only its GUI version and of course, it's option from Control Panel is removed. It's files still exist. And if you really want to run it, you have the enter the following commands in an Elevated Command Prompt:

Winsat formal

However, after a hardware upgrade or anything else, you can re-run the WEI by writing in an Elevated Command Prompt:

Winsat formal -restart

Well, where are the final assessment files to see the score?

Head on the directory C:\Windows\Performance\WinSat\DataStore . Now open the file <date.time>.Formal.Assessment (Initial).WinSAT.xml.

The file will open in your default browser. Navigate down to see your score (under <WinSpr>).

The process is rather complicate but there are other 3rd Party tools available to simplify the task (such as Chris PC WEI tool).

ALRIGHT, WHY THIS WEI WAS MADE HIDDEN???

Ever since the Vista days, Windows provided a “Windows Experience Index” score in your My Computer properties. The WEI score was supposed to be a numerical indicator of your PC’s brawn. Powerful PCs received higher scores, and so on.

Unfortunately, the WEI’s scoring criteria weren’t well known, and it placed odd, seemingly artificial caps on the highest possible scores. (Windows 7's cap was 7.9, while Vista’s was 5.9.) Whether for these or other reasons, the WEI never seemed to catch on, and it’s nowhere to be found in Windows 8.1.

Back in the Vista and Win 7 days I bought several laptops for other people based on WEI, and it proved to be very useful especially at the low end (US$300 - $500 range), where I was able to ferret out machines that might have a decent CPU and memory score, but disproportionately underpowered video.  I even used it to buy one machine which had high numbers except for disk I/O, then plopped in a SSD to boost the score from 4.3 to 5.7 -- and the real world performance truly was good.  My mother still has that Vista laptop 7 years later and watches Hulu+ and Netflix daily.

The nicest thing about WEI being in the GUI was that I could run it on multiple machines on the shelves in a big box store and nobody took notice.  Open up a console window, which many store demos disable, and people immediately assume you are hacking their equipment.

As for the console output, is there a way to have it spit out the same numbers in Windows 8.1 that the GUI-based WEI did in Windows 7?  I understand all these stats, but having the 5 component numbers with the overall index was a FAST way to compare between machines.

Final results from "winsat formal" (this was on a VM, so yes, some of the numbers are horrid!)...

> CPU LZW Compression                          206.57 MB/s

> CPU AES256 Encryption                        14377.14 MB/s

> CPU Vista Compression                        380.73 MB/s

> CPU SHA1 Hash                                809.24 MB/s

> Uniproc CPU LZW Compression                  90.38 MB/s

> Uniproc CPU AES256 Encryption                85.42 MB/s

> Uniproc CPU Vista Compression                9145.16 MB/s

> Uniproc CPU SHA1 Hash                        420.79 MB/s

> Memory Performance                           14606.28 MB/s

> Direct3D Batch Performance                   12.87 F/s

> Direct3D Alpha Blend Performance             13.10 F/s

> Direct3D ALU Performance                     4.13 F/s

> Direct3D Texture Load Performance            4.70 F/s

> Direct3D Batch Performance                   0.00 F/s

> Direct3D Alpha Blend Performance             0.00 F/s

> Direct3D ALU Performance                     0.00 F/s

> Direct3D Texture Load Performance            0.00 F/s

> Direct3D Geometry Performance                0.00 F/s

> Direct3D Geometry Performance                0.00 F/s

> Direct3D Constant Buffer Performance         0.00 F/s

> Video Memory Throughput                      1123.43 MB/s

> Dshow Video Encode Time                      3.48968 s

> Media Foundation Decode Time                 0.97502 s

> Disk  Sequential 64.0 Read                   87.06 MB/s          6.3

> Disk  Random 16.0 Read                       0.50 MB/s          2.5

> Total Run Time 00:03:20.20

Thanks very much Muhammad FahadBaig! Have a good day!

wiz9

Yah, it should be restored / easily accessible like before. This one tool helps you to compare which device to buy, based on the power specs.

I suggest it be restored also.!