The Experience Index is a utility found in the Windows 7 operating system that help you to determine what might causing your computer to run slow. The Experience Index will assign a score or system rating which is the measurement of the speed of the computers software and hardware. The scores range from a low of one to a high of 7.9. You will be provided with a detailed listing that rates the RAM, processor, gaming graphics, graphics, and transfer rate of the primary hard drive.

You will find the Experience Index in the Control Panel when you click on “View basic information about your computer” and look under “System and Security”. Next when you click on it a display of all the information important about your Windows operating system and hardware. You will find the score next to “Rating” under the “System” tab. The index score will be of the slowest component found.

Clicking on the link “Windows Experience Index” that is found next to the score you will see a report that details all of the scores of the five components. These subscores are for the processor, RAM, , gaming graphics, graphics and the transfer rate of the hard disk.

You can replace the component with the lowest score first. If two components have relatively equal low scores then you may need to replace both. You may not be able to replace the processor on the motherboard of your computer so if that component has the lowest score you might have to buy a new computer.