Installing Custom Gadgets
If you want to install custom gadgets (from for example: http://vista.gallery.microsoft.com/vista/SideBar.aspx) you first have to associate the .gadget extension with the Windows SideBar. You can do that by downloading and importing gadget.reg (right click - Save As) into the Windows register. For just opening the .gadget file didn’t always work, so here is the custom way if gadgets won’t install automatically. Prerequisite is that you have installed WinRAR or any other ZIP unpacking program. You can download WinRAR from http://www.rarlabs.com/
1. Go to http://vista.gallery.microsoft.com/vista/SideBar.aspx or any other gadgets website and click Download. When the download window appears don’t click Open, but click Save!
2. Right click the .gadget-file and choose Open With in the context menu.
3. In the Open With window uncheck Always use the selected program to open this kind of file, and click Browse. Navigate to C:\Program Files\WinRAR\, select WinRAR.exe and click Open. In the Open With main window click OK to open the gadget file with WinRAR. Click Open if you get a Security Warning.
4. In WinRAR click Extract To in the menubar. In the Extraction path and options window browse to C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\, and type the name of your gadget including .Gadget (You can type it over from the titlebar of your WinRAR main window). In my case this name is MultiMeterDv1.25a.Gadget. Now click OK to extract the gadget to the Gadgets folder. After the extraction has completed you can close WinRAR.
5. Now you can add the item to the Sidebar by right clicking on the Sidebar and clicking Add Gadgets!
Tags Server 2008 Workstation
March 31st, 2008 at 9:32
This has been great so far! Thanks for the guide. I’m not sure if i’ve missed something in the guide somewhere, because the default Weather and RSS gadgets don’t work…the dynamic features seem to be failing to communicate with the data servers and end up hanging or idle without any display. Is there a solution for this?
Admin: As you can see in my final Windows 2008 Workstation sidebar, a Weather gadget from the Windows Live Gallery is working and the feed from the forum is now working too in my sidebar. If your dynamic gadgets don’t display any information, maybe some firewall is blocking the sidebar.exe process?
April 4th, 2008 at 14:21
yes, it could’ve been a combination of a few things, but allowing it in the firewall was the last step that ended with success. now i can use the gadgets
April 8th, 2008 at 21:47
Same here… cannot get sidebar gadgets to connect to the net… also disabled windows firewall
May 28th, 2008 at 6:07
Doesn´t work properly
I can install the Sidebar, but i cannot add gadgets to it
i don´t really think I was mistaking while extraction etc …?
June 17th, 2008 at 22:15
The Sidebar is running properly, but none of the gadgets seem to work. the weather one says service not available, same with the currency one. i have added sidebar.exe to firewall exceptions. also the gadget website doesnt allow me to download them. i click and nothing happens
Admin: After you executed the regsvr32 commands from step 4 of the Sidebar page, the Sidebar should be able to automatically install gadgets from the Gadgets website. If it won’t maybe you can try to find out what the problem is using Sysinternals Process Monitor. Maybe this topic can help you with that.