Weekly quickTIP

More on Hacking WEI

Improve your score and get access to all the Vista goodies.

• By Greg Shields
• 05/29/2007

In talking with Peter recently, I learned there's so much more to the internal conversation that goes on when the Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSAT) is launched. You can analyze your resulting log file to reverse engineer out of the results why you were given the score you got. That log file is stored in the location %systemroot%\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore and is titled with the date and time the WinSAT process is run.

So as to generate a really poor operating environment that would illuminate where WinSAT would give up some of its secrets, I built a Vista machine inside a virtual environment with not a lot of resources. Running the WinSAT process there with all the limiting virtualization hardware drivers showed that WEI automatically downgrades some of your scores based on system parameters.

This section of the file told an interesting story:

<LimitsApplied>
  <MemoryScore>
    <LimitApplied Friendly="Physical memory available to
    the OS is less than or equal to 1.5GB - limit mem score
    to 4.5" Relation="LE">1610612736</LimitApplied>
  </MemoryScore>
  <GraphicsScore>
    <LimitApplied Friendly="Limiting DWM Score to 1.0 - no
    DX9 capeability">NoDX9</LimitApplied>
  </GraphicsScore>
  <GamingScore>
    <LimitApplied Friendly="No DX9 capeability - limiting
    D3D Score to 1.0">NoDX9</LimitApplied>
  </GamingScore>
</LimitsApplied>

It appears that system RAM must be at or above 1.5GB to eliminate a memory score limitation and that DirectX9 supportability on the part of the video card will force the graphics and 3D gaming score way down.

If hacking XML files isn't your cup of tea, you can interact directly with WinSAT via the command line by typing winsat {parameter}. To get a system overview type winsat features. To kick off a full formal test, you can type winsat formal. What's interesting here is that by doing it at the command prompt, you can watch the tests as they start and complete.

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