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Desktop gadgets disappear


Beyond_Life

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Hello,

 

Im very font of several gadgets. I have one for my battery (I use a Toshiba l555-t10 laptop), one for cpu usage, one for my drives (also showing my skydrive and ds-110j network disk) and one for my wifi. But i also have one for Windows Media Player. But that one (and also one for Deamon Tools) keep disappearing after switching between programs of just simpel switching tabs in Firefox. When i return tot destop, i first have to either restart the sidebar or add the gadget again to get acces to it. But in the meantime the gadget keeps on doing it work, like playing music on the WMP gadget. How can I solve this problem?

Bytheway, its only happening when i use the "showdesktopbuttonthingy in the lower right of the screen, next to the clock.

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Is this the default gadgets that are included with Windows 7 or an extra sidebar?

 

The default gadgets shouldn't ever minimize, even if you press the Show Desktop (Aero Peek) button in the bottom right corner of the Taskbar. In Windows 7 Microsoft did away with the sidebar and gadgets now run stand-alone.

 

If this is what we are talking about, these are the OEM Windows 7 gadgets and there are a few known bugs (and fixes).

  • Try turning on the UAC if you have it disabled, this might fix gadgets and make them appear.
  • Open the Run menu (Windows Key + R) and then paste in
    %ProgramFiles%\Windows Sidebar\sidebar.exe /showGadgets


    and press enter to restart the gadget process.

 

It sounds also though like you could be referring to the system tray notification icons rather than gadgets.. unless I'm wrong but I'm not aware of a daemon tools windows 7 gadget? [screenshot below]

icontray.png.d33613819221b48fc71157b6654e6bab.png

 

Let me know so we can track down the cause of this problem and get it working right!

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Im talking about the gadgets I can place on the desktop. I have the Google sidebar installed, but those are not the gadgets im talking about.

 

There is a Deamon Tool Lite gadget, and it looks like this.Daemon-Tools-Lite-Freeware.jpg

I got it from a friend, but till now, I never knew you could only get it with a PRO download from Deamon Tools. Its a great gadget and I use it allot.

 

Im running Win7 Home Premium (legal, came with the laptop) and i use the Aero peek and snap allot. But those Aero functions, specially the button in the far lower right, make 2 gadgets dissapear. The gadget i use to check my battery status that came with the Laptop stays put all the time when I want to. Next to that I use gadgets from http://addgadget.com/ The one to check the drives, cpu usage and wifi status. Those three always stay put when I want to, and dont dissapear. But then the next one. Its a WMP gadget. And that one leaves desktop every time i use Aero shake, peek or snap. And I have no clue why. But the wmp gadget I cant use atm, cause Im apparently not able to connect my Synology DS-110j to my laptop again. So that sucks. Big time.

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Very cool that daemon tools has a gadget, that is something I didn't know but I sort of lost faith with that company when they added spyware to their lite version.

 

It sounds like your gadget process might have something seriously wrong with it. In Windows 7 I think it's stored at C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\sidebar.exe

You could try running the 32 bit version and see if it still crashes, unless you're already on 32 bit...

 

It could also be daemon tools messing stuff up... I just don't trust them.

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Thanks for the reply. But heres another question. Maby a weird one, but why should I want to let the side bar run on 32? I mean, i have a 64bit win7 Home Premium Toshiba 555-10T laptop with 8 gigs of ram inside. This freaking top of the built laptop should run this just normal. It sound kinda weird to let something run on 32bit. Its like driving 50 in a Murciëlago just so you wont wear the tyres out.

 

But im gonna try it. If it slows just down, ill reverse it. If it works and it doesnt slow stuff down, ill keep it, and youll be my hero for four weeks.

 

:-)

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Any luck with the windows 7 sidebar in 32-bit mode?

 

I've found a couple other things that could be causing the problem as well, but I would need to know how you installed Windows 7.

 

Is it the beta/rc version?

or

Is it an upgraded vista-to-7 version?

or

Is it the stand-alone retail release of Windows 7?

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  • 4 weeks later...

It's true that some gadgets don't run perfectly fine on 64-bit, but what's the reason for installing 32-bit? It will only limit the capabilities of your machine! And also I don't think that windows is guilty for this bug. It could just be a badly programmed gadget. I tried my Daemon Tools gadget right now - no aero effects interfere with it. I'm on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

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It's true that some gadgets don't run perfectly fine on 64-bit, but what's the reason for installing 32-bit? It will only limit the capabilities of your machine! And also I don't think that windows is guilty for this bug. It could just be a badly programmed gadget. I tried my Daemon Tools gadget right now - no aero effects interfere with it. I'm on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

 

 

Look now Let the people try to make it a 32bit Win and then try to put the Gadgets again.And if the 32bit version suits them they wil bee with the 32bit version!

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  • 7 months later...
Guest vipre92

I have Win7 Ultimate 64 bit (upgraded from XP3 Pro. I'm having a different problem with gadgets disappearing. My gadgets, all of them, disappeared a few weeks ago when the system updated windows automatically while I was asleep. I followed the instructions for the UAC. Everything was fine. When I try to drag & drop ANY of the gadgets from the Gadgets table, they either completely disappear or become completely transluscent except some edges (drag pointer over some area's and X or drag icon symbol shows up). Got any idea's?

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  • 2 weeks later...
When I try to drag & drop ANY of the gadgets from the Gadgets table, they either completely disappear or become completely transluscent except some edges (drag pointer over some area's and X or drag icon symbol shows up). Got any idea's?

 

It sounds like your 64bit sidebar executable was corrupted, you'll need to replace it with a new one.

 

This is located at C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\sidebar.exe

You can get a new copy of this file from the Windows 7 disk, or you can ask someone for one. I'll upload mine if you need me to.

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  • 1 month later...
Guest ddruker

It's MALWARE

When I logged onto my new HP Pavilion this morning, all of my gadgets had disappeared. This was doubly confusing since, when my wife logged onto the same computer, using her own user profile, all of her gadgets were still in place.

 

I spent an hour chatting online with one HP technician, and he could not figure out the problem. His advice was to do a System Restore, which was not possible since my notebook is brand new and there were no restore points.

 

The second technician spent another half hour with me. His advice was to do a "scannow" as Administrator, then do a Startup Repair. This did not work.

 

Then I scanned my notebook with a piece of software I had used before (Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware). This worked like a charm. It turns out that there was some malware on my notebook and, once I had removed these nasty, annoying files with Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware software and restarted my notebok, I was able to reinstall all of my gadgets.

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  • 3 months later...
Guest abrahammaslow

Win7 x64

 

I have a number of desktop gadgets on my PC. The CPU use, network use and weather ones are nice, but not really necessary... those are the ones that still work.

 

The others, are web admin tracking gadgets, some custom-made, some downloaded, which monitor my home server's load, connectivity, session and service status and history. These ones are actually important, as I want to ensure solid uptime. These gadgets do not work.

 

They were working just fine until about 3 hours ago, and then they all just disappeared. I've tried uninstalling, reinstalling, examining the code, forcing sidebar gadgets to display, etc... none of it has worked. I can't think of any reason these gadgets should not be showing, but they're just not.

 

I can add, remove and display additional gadgets just fine, such as misc gadgets that came with the system, or bundled with software... it's just those server tracking ones that I can't see. The gadget selection window pops out of focus when I click on them, as if applying the focus to the selected gadget, but they just don't show up.

 

About all I can think of is maybe some service died or froze or something, which some gadgets are dependent on but not others? but it doesn't really make sense, since it's the simplest html and javascript gadgets that stopped working, while other far more complex ones work just fine.

 

Any ideas before I start pulling out my hair?

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