Fix Windows 7 Sidebar With UAC Off

As many of you undoubtedly know already, in Windows 7 Beta 1, disabling UAC also causes the gadgets to stop working.  This can be very annoying, especially for the power users who turn off UAC, or for those who are turning it of in order to avoid that nasty token elevation bug that rears it’s ugly head out of random on some machines.

The reason for this is that Microsoft made the assumption that the sidebar process would never be run in an elevated state.  So when you try to start it with UAC disabled it detects that it would have to run elevated, so it just does nothing to abide by the pre-set rules set by Microsoft.  Thankfully there is an undocumented registry setting to correct this issue.

  1. Open Registry Editor (regedit.exe)
  2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Sidebar\Settings
  3. Create a new DWORD Value called AllowElevatedProcess
  4. Set the value of the new DWORD to 1
  5. Close the registry editor.  Your gadgets should work now.  No reboot or anything necessary.

So there you have it, an actual fix to the issue that doesn’t require swapping out the sidebar executable like some sites suggest *cough* mydigitallife *cough*.

Posted by: Chris123NT

Published on: January 19th, 2009 at 9:53 AM

Tagged with , ,

Posted in Windows 7

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45 Responses to 'Fix Windows 7 Sidebar With UAC Off'

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  1. January 19, 2009 at 11:19 am

    deeper2k:

    Great job, Chris! Thanks!
    That’s all most users want :)

  2. January 19, 2009 at 12:37 pm

    barracuda:

    Nice and clean,work like a sharm!Thank you Chris for this nice guide :)

  3. January 19, 2009 at 2:13 pm

    Mark:

    Good work, I had to extract the Windows Sidebar folder from install.wim in build 6801. This is so much easier. I still don’t understand why you have to run “%ProgramFiles%\Windows Sidebar\sidebar.exe” /showgadget for Desktop Gadget Gallery to start as oppose to just clicking sidebar.exe.

  4. January 19, 2009 at 4:46 pm

    yellow:

    Hi Chris,
    manny thanks for this nice guide.
    I will this guide to translate into German and
    I hope this is okay for you. I’ll send a Trackback to you.
    Sorry for my English.

  5. January 19, 2009 at 6:45 pm

    Brian:

    Thanks Chris…this was the biggest thing that was annoying me in Windows 7.

  6. January 19, 2009 at 7:55 pm

    ct:

    Very nice! Great find!

  7. January 20, 2009 at 12:31 am

    Pete:

    Chris you rock, its always a little scary doing things in the registry but you made it easy as clicking on the start button. Hope I can help you some day.

  8. January 20, 2009 at 1:37 am

    deeper2k:

    Chris, sorry, what about 7000 x64? Do I need to create QWORD Value?

  9. January 20, 2009 at 3:23 am

    Fix Windows 7 Sidebar with UAC Off issue:

    [...] SiteMap January 20, 200912:23 am Fix Windows 7 Sidebar with UAC Off issue As many of you undoubtedly know already, in Windows 7 Beta 1, disabling UAC also causes the gadgets to stop working. The reason for this is that Microsoft made the assumption that the sidebar process would never be run in an elevated state.  So when you try to start it with UAC disabled it detects that it would have to run elevated, so it just does nothing to abide by the pre-set rules set by Microsoft. Here’s the fix: [...]

  10. January 20, 2009 at 5:12 am

    Sanoj:

    Thanks Chris123NT, works fine on my x64!
    @ deeper2k: No, just create a DWORD(32-bit) with value “1″. Close regedit and start Desktop Gadgets with start search.

  11. January 20, 2009 at 9:53 am

    Dew Drop - January 20, 2009 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew:

    [...] Fix Windows 7 Sidebar with UAC Off (Chris) [...]

  12. January 21, 2009 at 2:39 pm

    Windows 7: При отключенном UAC перестают работать гаджеты « butaji:

    [...] http://chris123nt.com/2009/01/19/fix-windows-7-sidebar-with-uac-off/ [...]

  13. January 21, 2009 at 3:50 pm

    SithToast:

    Thanks Chris, you rock :D

  14. January 21, 2009 at 5:39 pm

    ALPHAKID:

    NICE JOB MAN AND VERY EASY.. SORRY TO ASK BUT DO U KNOW HOW TO FIX UPDATE ERR. I CANT UPDATE. AND AGAIN THANKX.

  15. January 22, 2009 at 12:48 am

    Chris123NT:

    @AlphaKid

    Here is the fix for Windows Update and MSI installers not working:

    http://chris123nt.com/2009/01/18/sqm-client-causing-crashing-in-windows-7/

  16. January 22, 2009 at 11:44 am

    Tony:

    No, just create a DWORD(32-bit) with value “1″. Close regedit and start Desktop Gadgets with start search.

    Sorry don`t work with build 7000 x64 bit

    Any suggestion.

    Thankx Tony

  17. January 23, 2009 at 1:36 am

    Jake:

    Could you post a list of the values in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Sidebar\Settings?
    I think I’ve got something missing… my gadgets work fine, but whenever I open the Gadgets window, the window opens, and the gadget icons appear then disappear (and the window stays open). Thanks!

  18. January 23, 2009 at 2:53 am

    me:

    thanks man fo the nice solution

  19. January 23, 2009 at 7:05 am

    Chris123NT:

    @Jake: The only other value in there is the following string value:

    SidebarDockedPartsOrder with the value set to “0×1,0×2,0×3,0×4″ without the quotes

  20. January 23, 2009 at 9:12 am

    Jake:

    Well crap. That’s all I’ve got, too… guess I’ll tinker around some more! Thanks for the help though!

  21. January 23, 2009 at 3:22 pm

    Eclipes:

    thanks man great job

  22. January 23, 2009 at 6:40 pm

    BillyBobJoeBob:

    Oh my gosh! Thank you soo much! I was getting really angry that I couldn’t get the Sidebar back and I’ve been tryin to fix it for 2 weeks! Thank you!

  23. January 24, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    Exotic Hadron:

    Nice… Wonderting if any web-service can be forced to run elevated by using this value.

    BTW, Chris is it possible to make Windows 7 Sidebar run on Windows Server 2008 R2? For some reason, MSFT included Desktop Experience pack into the server bundle but has not included the Sidebar. Those stock/currency gadgets are nice (huh, as you might guess, I am using this on my laptop. After seeing what performance it shows on my server I decided why not to get rid of Vista and just set the beta of server instead.)

  24. January 24, 2009 at 10:19 pm

    David:

    Sweet worked great thanks

  25. January 25, 2009 at 1:06 pm

    chrismcl:

    Great Job

    kinda genius why don´t you start working for microsoft ? so they´ll have at least 1 user friendly person in their company

    Well done

  26. January 28, 2009 at 12:29 am

    JonB:

    Thanks!

    Will this enable automatic sidebar launch at startup also? Or does that still require the hack to include startup command for sidebar.exe?

  27. January 29, 2009 at 9:21 pm

    Arty:

    Very well done, sir!

  28. February 5, 2009 at 4:22 am

    Spider_LinuX:

    Thanks the same conf in vista Thx. :D

  29. February 7, 2009 at 12:35 am

    yoavon1:

    Thank you so much !
    I had so much trouble with that one…
    :-)

  30. February 7, 2009 at 10:14 am

    Mors Kloverdox:

    Thanks from Brazil! :)

  31. February 9, 2009 at 3:33 pm

    Adi:

    Thanks a million, I didn’t know it was because of the UAC that the gadgets stopped working but your advice fixed it like a charm. Thanks again!

  32. February 10, 2009 at 4:08 pm

    RL:

    Thanks a lot! It works great now ;-)

  33. February 16, 2009 at 9:02 pm

    Gonzalo:

    Excelente, gracias por la solución.

  34. February 20, 2009 at 11:29 am

    lukasz:

    good job man!
    thanks a lot! :)

  35. February 21, 2009 at 8:56 am

    pjuppi:

    YAY!, its working mate!, ty i love you ^_^

  36. February 24, 2009 at 5:39 am

    nckien:

    Good job. Thanks a ton.

  37. March 3, 2009 at 9:36 am

    JdgM3NT4L:

    Chris. Thanks so much. Glad to have the sidebar back. You should give yourself a raise and while you are at it… A nice promotion is in order as well. Thanks again.

  38. March 14, 2009 at 7:57 am

    alin:

    Thanks for this

  39. April 8, 2009 at 3:56 pm

    acewolf:

    Thanks very much from Czech Republic

  40. April 9, 2009 at 1:23 pm

    sonny:

    thnx for this info I was relly need that thank you!!!!

  41. April 18, 2009 at 4:23 pm

    happy man:

    wow worked great! i would of never thought i would had been that easy. THANKS

  42. April 18, 2009 at 9:15 pm

    jim k.:

    thank you ! works great

  43. May 14, 2009 at 8:31 am

    SEVEN: Impossible de lancer la SideBar , Open Blog:

    [...] J’ai trouvé ma solution ici http://chris123nt.com/2009/01/19/fix-windows-7-sidebar-with-uac-off/ [...]

  44. June 4, 2009 at 9:56 am

    lucian:

    Man,thousand thanks from Romania

  45. July 1, 2009 at 1:22 pm

    funcrack:

    Thanks for this nice advice. I’m delighted fully.

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