Mystery Machine EASY Guide

Although there already exists a (surely excellent) guide on unlocking this elusive achievement with just about any hardware using virtualization and VMware, I thought the solution was a bit too convoluted for the less tech-savvy people out there. The process of using external programs, booting into UEFI, setting up a VM with windows.iso and so on is just a bit too complicated for my liking, so I set out to find an easier solution. If you are like me, and have scoured the discussion and guide pages for an answer to this, I hope my guide will help you.

Disclaimer: This method may not work for all hardware configurations, depending on when the hardware was released. However, it worked for me with a laptop GTX 1060 GPU and should work for anything released after that (and possibly some older cards as well).

TL;DR; Replace the current SystemInfo with version 4.28

How it works

The achievement is triggered by using hardware that is not recognized by SystemInfo. The "intended" solution is to use hardware that is so new/old/obscure that it is not mapped in their database. It was also confirmed by the developer that you can trigger this achievement by using a VM or running the benchmarks on an unmapped engineering sample:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/223850/discussions/0/5221372225820968604/#c3412055301109935699

However, my solution is slightly different. Instead of messing with the hardware or how SystemInfo reads the hardware, why not change the SystemInfo component itself? Basically every component that is mapped now would at some point in time have qualified for this achievment, before SystemInfo was updated to know about that hardware. So using an older version of SystemInfo is like traveling back in time and running the benchmark with your current hardware, but the program thinks it has not been released yet.

Luckily for us, on their website they do have a version 4.28 available for download that is intended for legacy system use: SystemInfo page[benchmarks.ul.com]

The rest of this guide will walk you through how to get the achievement step by step:

1. Uninstalling the current version of SystemInfo
   
2. Installing the old legacy 4.28 version
   
3. Getting the achievement
   
4. Getting back to the latest SystemInfo version

1. Uninstalling the current version of SystemInfo

Assuming you have 3DMark installed and have already run some benchmarks, you probably have a version of SystemInfo installed. At the time of writing, the newest version is 5.77

We will need to remove this program in order to install the legacy version with a less up to date database. In order to do this, locate Futuremark SystemInfo in Apps>Installed Apps if you are using Win 11.


Then click the three dots to the right and press uninstall. Follow any on screen instructions until the program is removed.

The process is very similar on Win 10 as well, except that the page is called Apps & features

2. Installing the old legacy 4.28 version

Go to the SystemInfo page[benchmarks.ul.com] and scroll down to SystemInfo 4.28[benchmarks.ul.com]. Press the button called "DOWNLOAD SYSTEMINFO 4.28 FOR LEGACY SYSTEMS"

Alternatively, use this link[benchmarks.ul.com] to download the .msi directly.


After downloading, run the downloaded file to install the legacy version of SystemInfo. Follow any on-screen prompts.

3. Getting the achievement

Now you are all set for the fun part: earning the achievement!

Simply launch 3DMark and choose a benchmark to run that is compatible with this old version of SystemInfo. I chose the original Fire Strike, which seemed to work well.

Once the run finishes the achievement should pop off, as long as your hardware is not listed in the 4.28 version of SystemInfo. Congratulations!

4. Getting back to the latest SystemInfo version

If you want to keep using 3DMark normally, you should reinstall the latest version of SystemInfo. This time you do not need to uninstall the 4.28 version first, since we are upgrading to a more recent version. However, if you still want to for some reason you can just follow the steps in the previous section on uninstalling the current version.

Go to the downloads page again: here[benchmarks.ul.com]

Press the "DOWNLOAD" button to download the .msi for the latest version. This is version 5.77 at the time of writing. Click the downloaded file and run it to install the latest version of SystemInfo.

Alternatively, use this link[benchmarks.ul.com] to download the latest .msi directly.


That is it! Now you can start up 3DMark again and continue using it as usual!

Final words

If you have made it this far, you have hopefully snagged that rare achievement and restored your machine right back to the way it was. Congratulations!

If you were helped by this guide, please consider leaving a like.

Feel free to write a comment telling me what you think of the instructions or if you have found any other easy ways to get this particular achievement.

Guide written by Hyglott on Steam. Do not repost the content anywhere without my permission, but feel free to share the guide itself.

[Big Goldberg]

Top guide, thanks.

[Giovani_Fert]

very good

[zerojaemin]

I failed. (RYZEN 9800x3d, RTX 5080) I did the same thing, but the achievement doesn't work because of recognition issues.

[Hyglott]

Thank you for your kind words

[-SeuvoniR-]

This guide should be written down in history <3

[Rega]

Legit, thank you.

[iddqd]

Confirmed on i7-2700K, 6950 XT

[Hyglott]

Happy to hear that!

[UndeletEd]

This just worked on a GTX960 4GB GPU.

[PutLotionNBasket]

Works perfectly. I got a couple errors about a system file, but ignored them and left them open and the benchmark started anyways. Achievement acquired. Easy. Thanks!