Windows Vista Sidebar is a useful feature that displays all your gadgets, such as clock, mini notepad, and any other gadgets you have installed. Unfortunately sometimes the sidebar can really annoy you by crashing, playing up, or just being there, because it takes up a lot of RAM. In this post I’m going to explain how to disable, repair, and customise Vista Sidebar.

Disable Vista Sidebar

A lot of people never use the sidebar and hate it hogging computer RAM. If you use the sidebar and want to keep it – skip this bit. If you want to disable it – read on.

It’s very easy to disable Vista Sidebar:

1. First right-click on the sidebar or the sidebar icon and click Properties
2. A new window will open. Uncheck Start sidebar when Windows starts
3. 
4. Click Apply, then click OK
5. Now right-click on the icon and click on Exit

From now on the Vista Sidebar won’t load on startup.

Repair Crashed Sidebar

Sometimes Windows Vista Sidebar stops working correctly, especially if you have a lot of gadgets installed – it just hangs, crashes, and just stops working. Luckily you can reset the sidebar to default settings with one simple tweak, which should repair it. By resetting the sidebar you’ll have to add your gadgets back to it. But it shouldn’t be a problem, considering your sidebar will work again.

First of all you’ll need to close the sidebar (right-click on the icon and click Exit). After that you’ll have to make sure it really got closed  – the fact that you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not running in the background. Open Task Manager, go to Processes and make sure sidebar.exe isn’t there. If it is, right-click on it and select End process.

Now you can reset the sidebar to default. Open a new Windows Explorer window and type this in the location bar: %localappdata%\microsoft\Windows Sidebar. The sidebar gadgets folder will open and there will be a file named Settings.ini. Rename that file to create a backup, because it contains your current sidebar settings. For example, name it Settings_old.ini. Now launch the sidebar from the Start menu. You’ll see a new Settings.ini file appear immediately. Simple as that.

If you are still having troubles with some gadgets, open the Gadgets folder in the Sidebar folder and delete any gadgets that are causing trouble. From now on your Vista Sidebar should be working properly.

Put a Gadget Anywhere On Your Desktop

If you don’t like all your gadgets being in the same place, you can easily put any sidebar gadget anywhere you like.  Just click and hold the pointer on the gadget, drag it anywhere you like, let go of the button. That’s it!