For some reason Windows Gadgets don’t run in Windows 7 if you disable the UAC. Now I like windows gadgets and I am trailing Windows 7 but some of the software I was using was having a hard time with UAC so we turned it off and all of a sudden all my gadgets disappeared. after a bit of searching around I found the solution of the Windows 7 News blog.
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The Windows 7 Sidebar and Gadgets do not work correctly if a user disables the User Account Control in Windows 7. There is however an easy way to make the gadgets and sidebar work again without having to replace system files (that was the way suggested in many forums).
All that needs to be done is to change one value of a parameter in the Windows 7 Registry to make the sidebar and gadgets work even with UAC disabled.
Open the Windows 7 Registry by pressing [Windows R], typing [regedit] and hitting [enter]. Now navigate to the Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Sidebar\Setting and change the value of AllowElevatedProcess to 1.
Restart the computer or logout and login again to see if the changes work as intended. The Registry setting ensures that the gadgets and the sidebar are working in Windows 7 properly even if UAC is disabled.
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On my machine that registry value was missing so I added a new DWORD to the setting. Logged out and back in and all my gadgets reappeared. Life is good again :)
