Vista Tutorial - Sidebar gadgets wont install vista home premium

Hi Everyone.
I have a problem with the sidebar on Vista HP. New Gadgets wont install. The sidebar loads properly and the gadgets that are there already work fine. If I go to vista gallery to download new ones they download ok I click open then run, the sidebar comes to the front and blinks but nothing installs There is nothing in the sidebar and nothing in the gallery and nothing new in the gadgets folder in either C:\program files etc or C:\users etc. I have tried lots of different gadgets from the vista gallery and none of them install.
I tried.
Downloading and installing from ie8b2
saving the downloads to my docs and installing from there right clicking and unblocking the gadget
changing language settings from english uk to english us
dragging and dropping
uninstalling ie8b2 doing the same from ie7
Coming off line stopping all running programms and installing.
doing the same from firefox 3
I have done a system restore, for luck not knowing how long I have had the problem. and I have tried from safemode but the bar didnt work in safemode
I search this site and followed this tutorial
Windows Sidebar will not Start in Vista
but it didnt work either
I am currently using comodo firewall and avast AV, but have tried lots of different security programs over the months . thinking that perhaps they have done something.

Any one got any ideas. Thanks in advance for your help.
Mike

I had the same problem, to get around that after trying everything you have tried, I manually installed the gadgets.

1. Save the new gadget to your directory somewhere easy to find.
2. Extract the file into a new folder called Calendar.Gadget for example, for your gadget will be, NewGadget.Gadget
3. Cut and Paste this folder with all the extracted contents into the Windows Sidebar Directory: C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets
4. Right click on the Sidebar and Add your new gadget.

Hope this helps, it worked for all my gadgets,
Futureboys

How To Repair Your Crashed or Hanging Vista Sidebar :: the How-To Geek

Your sidebar.ini is corrupt--known bug. need to close sidebar.exe processes, find the sidebar.ini, rename or delete it, restart sidebar and it will create another sidebar.ini. Add your gadgets again. rinse, repeat as needed..


My issue was with it trying to load 137 instances of calendar

How do I extract a Gadget file?

Friedebarth:

Right-click your zip file and choose Extract All... from the menu.

Ardneh

But I don't have a zip file, I only have a gadget file. That is, "blabla.gadget", not "blabla.zip"

Okay.

Yeah, so now what?

Right click > Extract All...

If you don't have an Extraction Utility, get 7zip.

Download

Install it.

Then: Right-click > 7zip > Extract Here