If you use Windows Vista Sidebar you probably found out on more than one occasion, how easy it can be to mess up the settings or accidentally delete gadgets.
And when that occurs, the only way to recover if you're unsuccessful with piecing things back together, is from a backup or a system restore. Neither of which is worth the time for something that is considered eye candy (for the amount of system memory it uses) on the desktop.
But after using Vista sidebar for a while, you may find yourself dependent on those little gadgets sitting on your desktop, that you just have to have everything back as they were.
So before you go messing around with tweaking a gadget or sidebar setting, here is a simple backup method which will make restoring your sidebar effortless, with out the need of any third party utility.
Before making any changes to the sidebar, simply make a copy of the Windows Sidebar folder located under your user profile folder at:
C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar
NOTE: if your default Vista installation was installed on another partition, just substitute the drive letter in the path listed above, such as D:\Users\….
You can copy the folder (and it's sub-folder contents) to a USB drive or another location on your hard drive.
The next time you want to restore the sidebar to it's previous setting (from the last time you made a backup copy):
- close and exit Windows Sidebar by right clicking on the Windows Sidebar icon in the System tray and click Exit.
- then copy the folder back to your user profile (path shown above) and overwrite the contents of the folder.
- when the copy is completed, restart the sidebar, by clicking on Start and type sidebar in the search field, then click on Windows Sidebar in the search results.
You should now see the sidebar appear with all your gadgets and settings, as they were before you messed everything up 😉
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