YouWhat
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Today, in this guide I will be showing you how to re-enable the Gadgets in Windows 8.x, Server and even Windows 10 (although this should work in Windows XP, it is not advised).
Let me first get the disclaimer out of the way;
Neither myself, nor OC3D are responsible for anything you do to your computer and any damage that may occur as a result, in following these guides, it assumes you have a certain level of knowledge that will enable you to follow them without needing your hand to be held every step of the way. Now that is out of the way, we can start to proceed….
When Microsoft released Windows 8, they left out the Gadgets and Sidebar that they introduced with Vista, they said it was to do with security reasons, which in effect it was, as anyone could craft a Gadget which could then be installed, and unbeknown to the end user, it could contain some nasty lines of code, which could then open up the machine to the naughty people out there online, as the Gadgets themselves, wasn’t sandboxed when installed and was running, which is where the issues lay.
Now there was a few people out there who still wanted to use the Gadgets and so came up with a way to reinstall them back into the OS. The method of doing this is fairly clean way to install and activate them so nobody who attempts this should encounter any issues.
What we need for this are the following;
A Windows 7 PC
A Windows 8.x / Windows 10 PC
A USB Stick
A Text Editor (notepad will do if you wanted to create your own registry keys)
About 5 to 10 minutes of free time.
Now is time to get our hands dirty, roll up sleeves, and insert that USB stick into the Windows 7 PC, open File Explorer and make 2 directories (just one directory if using 32 bit system) on the USB Drive;
Program Files - (This is also needed on 32 bit system)
Program Files (x86)
Now in File Explorer go to your Windows install drive, Program Files Folder and Copy Windows Sidebar directory to the Program Files folder on USB stick, once this is done, do the same with the Windows Sidebar folder inside the Program Files (x86) folder.
Once you have copied the 2 folders, you have finished with the Windows 7 PC, so remove the USB stick, and insert it into the Windows 8.x / Windows 10 machine, and copy the 2 program files folders straight into the root of the system, and when you get the requester popup, click Continue to give the process admin rights to be able to copy the files into the system drive.
Next we need to insert the attached registry keys (in zip file attached to this post) into the system by double clicking on it.
For those curious, here is what is contained within the registry keys;
Once the registry keys have been added, we have access to the Gadgets menu from the right click on the desktop, although they won’t work to well as of yet (below is example of the standard clock gadget).
The final step to this is to run a few commands in an elevated command prompt.
Right click on command prompt, and select “Run as Administrator”
Next we need to enter the Windows Sidebar directory we copied across earlier, so do the following;
cd /
cd “Program Files”
cd ”Windows Sidebar”
Now we are in the directory, we run the following commands and once this is done, we have enabled Gadgets again to work in you choice of OS (in my case I’m using Windows 10).
Here are those commands for you so as you can just copy and paste them into the command prompt;
Here we can now see that the Clock gadget is actually working!!
And here for all those who are still wondering, or doubting this actually works (and without any stability issues also I might add)
Gadgets on my Windows 10 desktop above, are from ADDGADGET.COM, I am running PCMeter 0.4 to get temps of CPU (also works for GPU gadget on site).
Hope this helps some people out there who have wanted certain gadgets back into their life.
Let me first get the disclaimer out of the way;
Neither myself, nor OC3D are responsible for anything you do to your computer and any damage that may occur as a result, in following these guides, it assumes you have a certain level of knowledge that will enable you to follow them without needing your hand to be held every step of the way. Now that is out of the way, we can start to proceed….
When Microsoft released Windows 8, they left out the Gadgets and Sidebar that they introduced with Vista, they said it was to do with security reasons, which in effect it was, as anyone could craft a Gadget which could then be installed, and unbeknown to the end user, it could contain some nasty lines of code, which could then open up the machine to the naughty people out there online, as the Gadgets themselves, wasn’t sandboxed when installed and was running, which is where the issues lay.
Now there was a few people out there who still wanted to use the Gadgets and so came up with a way to reinstall them back into the OS. The method of doing this is fairly clean way to install and activate them so nobody who attempts this should encounter any issues.
What we need for this are the following;
A Windows 7 PC
A Windows 8.x / Windows 10 PC
A USB Stick
A Text Editor (notepad will do if you wanted to create your own registry keys)
About 5 to 10 minutes of free time.
Now is time to get our hands dirty, roll up sleeves, and insert that USB stick into the Windows 7 PC, open File Explorer and make 2 directories (just one directory if using 32 bit system) on the USB Drive;
Program Files - (This is also needed on 32 bit system)
Program Files (x86)
Now in File Explorer go to your Windows install drive, Program Files Folder and Copy Windows Sidebar directory to the Program Files folder on USB stick, once this is done, do the same with the Windows Sidebar folder inside the Program Files (x86) folder.
Once you have copied the 2 folders, you have finished with the Windows 7 PC, so remove the USB stick, and insert it into the Windows 8.x / Windows 10 machine, and copy the 2 program files folders straight into the root of the system, and when you get the requester popup, click Continue to give the process admin rights to be able to copy the files into the system drive.
Next we need to insert the attached registry keys (in zip file attached to this post) into the system by double clicking on it.
For those curious, here is what is contained within the registry keys;
Once the registry keys have been added, we have access to the Gadgets menu from the right click on the desktop, although they won’t work to well as of yet (below is example of the standard clock gadget).
The final step to this is to run a few commands in an elevated command prompt.
Right click on command prompt, and select “Run as Administrator”
Next we need to enter the Windows Sidebar directory we copied across earlier, so do the following;
cd /
cd “Program Files”
cd ”Windows Sidebar”
Now we are in the directory, we run the following commands and once this is done, we have enabled Gadgets again to work in you choice of OS (in my case I’m using Windows 10).
Here are those commands for you so as you can just copy and paste them into the command prompt;
Here we can now see that the Clock gadget is actually working!!
And here for all those who are still wondering, or doubting this actually works (and without any stability issues also I might add)
Gadgets on my Windows 10 desktop above, are from ADDGADGET.COM, I am running PCMeter 0.4 to get temps of CPU (also works for GPU gadget on site).
Hope this helps some people out there who have wanted certain gadgets back into their life.
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