{"id":225,"date":"2015-02-18T23:35:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-18T23:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/?p=225"},"modified":"2021-05-04T22:57:22","modified_gmt":"2021-05-04T20:57:22","slug":"windows-7-sidebar-weather-gadget-service-not-available","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/2015\/02\/18\/windows-7-sidebar-weather-gadget-service-not-available\/","title":{"rendered":"Windows 7: Sidebar weather gadget &ldquo;service not available&rdquo;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"win7\" style=\"border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"win7\" src=\"https:\/\/www.borncity.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/win7_thumb1.jpg\" width=\"44\" align=\"left\" height=\"42\">It seems that a lot of Windows Vista and Windows 7 users are facing trouble with their sidebar gadgets. The weather gadget fails and reports \"Service not available\".<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/ssl-vg03.met.vgwort.de\/na\/f427d2970bf641c193204234844613e9\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">This issue has been popped up during the last years from time to time. Some sidebar gadgets like the weather app reporting \"Service not available\".<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Gadged01.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Gadged01\" style=\"border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Gadged01\" src=\"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Gadged01_thumb.jpg\" width=\"166\" height=\"101\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I wrote a couple of blog articles about this issue for my German blog readers. Since begin of February I recognized several thousands accesses to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.borncity.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/09\/minianwendung-wetter-verbindung-mit-dienst-nicht-herstellbar\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">this really old blog post<\/a>. After re-invoking my sidebar under Windows 7, my weather gadget shows the same behavior.<\/p>\n<h3>Microsoft has closed support for sidebar gadgets<\/h3>\n<p>Microsoft has announced in 2012 (as far as I remember), that due to security issues sidebar and sidebar gadgets are no longer supported. Windows 8 comes with apps, so sidebar gadgets are no longer required (in Microsoft's view). <\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, sidebar gadgets still worked till February 1 2015. It seems, that the service <em>money.service.msn.com <\/em>has been shutdown at begin of February. So gadgets can't reach the weather service and displays \"Service not available\". <\/p>\n<p>Some users are reporting, that their weather gadget is still running properly on one machine, whilst a second machine fails. One user reported, that on a machine one account works, while the second account causes the \"Service not available\" message. Searching the internet shows a lot of hits with partial solutions like: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Vista \u2013 Clear cache under <em>%LocalAppData%\\Local\\Microsoft\\Windows Sidebar\\Cache\\168522d5-1082-4df2-b2f6-9185c31f9472 <\/em>(here is another thread suggesting another cache path)\n<li>Search for file <em>configw7.xml \u2013 <\/em>if available, rename it to <em>config.xml<\/em> and copy it to path <br \/>%<em>LocalAppData%\\Local\\Microsoft\\ Windows Live\\Services\\Cache<\/em>\n<li>Or even simpler \u2013 open <em>%localappdata%\\Microsoft\\Windows Live\\Services\\Cache\\Config.xml <\/em>in editor and save it \u2013 shall solve the problem\n<li>Copy the files mentioned here from a working machine into the failed account.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This fixes some wrong server settings and redirects the gadget to still running services. But I guess, this will be only a temporary solution &#8211; if it even works. Microsoft's own sidebar gadgets are dead. An alternative could be to install third party whether gadgets. I've tested <a href=\"http:\/\/patpossible.de\/?p=228\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">this gadget<\/a> (should be available also in English). Some other solutions could be (I haven't tested it): <a title=\"http:\/\/nes.bplaced.net\/sidebar7.html\" href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20180403052841\/http:\/\/nes.bplaced.net:80\/sidebar7.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">7 sidebar<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/8gadgetpack.net\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">8GadgetPack<\/a>. So my recommendations: Don't waste your time fixing Microsoft's weather gadget and use a third party solution. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It seems that a lot of Windows Vista and Windows 7 users are facing trouble with their sidebar gadgets. The weather gadget fails and reports \"Service not available\".<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[98,97,99,17],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-windows","tag-gadgets","tag-sidebar","tag-troubleshoothing","tag-windows-7"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}