Fix Windows Sidebar Gadget File Association in Vista
Have you ever somehow managed to break the Gadget file association in Windows Vista? I have somehow, and that means that you can no longer install gadgets. Double-clicking a .gadget file does nothing, and the Sidebar offers no option to install gadgets itself!
If you try to re-associate the files with Windows Sidebar by telling to Open With… and navigating to the Sidebar executable, you’ll have found that that doesn’t help — all it does is bring the Sidebar to focus, but doesn’t install the gadget.
Fortunately, help is at hand: all you need to do is download the following archive and apply the registry entries by double-clicking the .reg file inside the archive, and saying Yes at the prompt.
Download Gadget Association registry entries.
All I did was export the corresponding keys from the registry on a Vista machine with a working Sidebar — nothing else!
Hope this helps others like it has me.
Downloading & Opening Files
Having trouble opening the files you've downloaded? Use 7-Zip, the open source archive compressor and extractor for Windows, used to make the archives on this website.
Mac user? Try out The Unarchiver. Using a flavour of Linux? If you love CLIs, P7ZIP will probably do you well. If you'd prefer a GUI to play with, try File Roller for GNOME, or Ark for KDE.
