Archive: July 22, 2015

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reenabling Windows weather gadgets

Wednesday,  07/22/15  09:50 PM

Here's a public service announcement: how to reenable Windows weather gadgets.  Why, you may ask, should this be a subject for a blog post?  Well because 1) Windows weather gadgets are nice and useful, and 2) Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, recently disabled them.  Permanently.  Sigh.

  1. In Task Manager, locate sidebar.exe and kill it.  Your old, dead, no-longer-updating gadgets will disappear.
  2. Go to "C:UsersUSERNAMEAppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows LiveServicesCache", edit "Config.xml", and save it without making any changes.  Yes you read that right, just do it.
  3. Right-click on your desktop, and select Gadgets.  This restarts sidebar.exe and poof! working weather gadgets.

For extra credit, here's how to set or change the location of each gadget:

  1. In Task Manager, locate sidebar.exe and kill it.  Your gadgets will disappear.
  2. Edit "C:UsersUSERNAMEAppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows SidebarSettings.ini".  You will see a section for each weather gadget with a WeatherLocation and a WeatherLocationCode.  You can change Weather Location to any text you like.  To set WeatherLocationCode, visit: https://weather.codes/search/.  The codes are eight characters, something like "USCA1228" (Westlake Village, California) or ""MAXX0002" (Antananarivo, Madagascar).
  3. Right-click on your desktop, and select Gadgets.  This restarts sidebar.exe and poof! updates made.

You're welcome!

PS this particular subject is a case study in useless misinformation spread all over the Internet.  Honestly people, if you don't know what you're talking about, stop talking.

 
 

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