Vista Squad

Can anyone please put me out of my misery? I have downloaded gadgets from an approved Microsoft source to my desktop in Windows Vista home premium. This should be really simple but every time I double click to install I get the standard windows message that the file cannot be opened and offering to search the web etc. etc. This happens on 2 PCs! Any ideas anyone please?

 

Hi can you give my the info on the gadgets (i.e name and web site) I'll download them and have a go as well.

 

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scottbelton@tiscali.co.uk

Hi. Thanks. I got them from http://vista.gallery.microsoft.com/vista/SideBar.aspx?mkt=en-gb I tried speed "test" and "all search" Neither worked!

 

Ok I'll have a play later today and let you know how I get on.

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scottbelton@tiscali.co.uk

I downloaded both and tested them, when you download the file do you save the file and has it got the file extension .gadget.

I then installed both the All Search, this one worked well but the Speed Test gadget failed to read any info from my laptop and did nothing no matter how much I played with the settings.

Have you downloaded any other gadgets and had them working?

The only other thing I noticed was that both of these downloads have a warning that they are from an unverified source maybe they are not as refined as they could be.

 

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scottbelton@tiscali.co.uk

Hi Scott

I checked and the extension was .gadget. I also have some on a free cd and I tried these with the same result. I then tried to install these on my desktop PC and .they worked! That caused me to do some more fiddling about with the orginals about but they seem to have lost their file associations as when I now click them they open in Internet Explorer! They think they are HTML files and I cant see how to get rid of the file associations.

If you right click the downloaded gadget file, then select Properties from the bottom of the pop up box.

Under the General Tab navigate to the type of file. and select the Change Button.The Open with box will now open, if present select Windows Sidebar gadget and select Ok.

If not present select Browse button, find the Windows sidebar folder open it and then select Sidebar and click Open then Ok and Ok again.

Now try to reinstall the gadget. Hope this works for you. Let us know how you get on.

Regards

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scottbelton@tiscali.co.uk

Hi again Scott,

I have done that and the file associations have been restored thanks. It still wont install though. When I double click it nothing happens. I can install gadgets on my main PC but not this laptop. I suspect this computer is at fault but it's quite new

 

Hi Have you been able to install any other programs apart from .gadgets If you can't it is possible that the Windows Installer service may have failed and the service needs to be restarted

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scottbelton@tiscali.co.uk

Hi Scott,

Nice bit of lateral thinking:-) I installed a program just yesterday without any problems.

Regards

Tony

 

 

Hi Tony

If you are still having issues with the .gadgets I can only think of a couple of other things you can try, first off you said it was quite a new pc so It may be worth setting it back to the earliest restore point and try again, maybe some other application's that you have installed are causing a conflict.

The other, would be to back every thing up and do a basic install of Vista and try them, add your existing programs and see how you go.

Regards

Scott

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scottbelton@tiscali.co.uk