Weather gadget not working- Cannot connect to service

 

Hi everyone,

 

I do not typically post on any type of forums but this issue really got me into some fun troubleshooting. I am an IT Engineer for the military so I just wanted to ensure anyone who gives this a shot that I have been a Windows expert for half of my life now. It SHOULD fix your issue, but if it does not it will not break anything so give it a shot if nothing else has worked for you.

 

 That said, I just spent 2 hours Googling and Binging trying to figure out why my father's stock weather gadget stopped working all of a sudden. Other machines in the house (all running Windows 7 Ultimate) were still working fine. This also affects the currency gagdet which he does not use.

 

I tried at least 7 different fixes that I read online...fixes from toggling your region settings, to disabling and re-enabling the gadget unchecking automatically detect in IE, to creating an elevated privs dword in the registry, to renaming the cache folder under app data\user\local\microsoft\windows live\services. Nothing worked. Cannot Connect to Service popped up whenever dragging out the gadget no matter what I attempted. I also read on numerous sites that Microsoft disabled the weather and currency gadget in a recent Windows update. I can confirm that this is NOT true. They recommend you stop using gadgets due to security vulnerabilities, but there is no AUTOMATIC update that will actually disable said two stock gadgets. There is however, a manual Fix It download from Microsoft you can install to perform the disabling of the gadgets. This is a manual download/install, not an automatic update.

 

 

So that brings me to what I did to fix it :-) So the renaming of the cache folder idea (which did not work) seemed like an idea I could expand upon. I tried a few different things and finally found the right combination of steps:

 

A) Copy the following files and folder from a Windows 7 machine with a working stock weather gadget to a flash drive or network file share:

 

1. %localappdata%\affected user\local\microsoft\windows\windows live\services\cache\config.xml (just copy the file)

 

2. %localappdata%\affected user\local\microsoft\windows\windows sidebar\cache\168522d5-1082-4df2-b2f6-9185c31f9472 (copy entire folder which should contain one or more xml files)

 

3. %localappdata%\affected user\local\microsoft\windows\windows sidebar\settings.ini (just copy the file)

 

 

B) Paste (OVERWRITING if necessary) the copied folder and files into the same locations on the machine whose stock weather gadget is not working.

 

 

C) Drag the weather gadget back out and this time it should be working

 

*** As I mentioned earlier, this issue effects both the weather and currency gadgets. I did not, however, attempt to fix the currency gadget. I would surmise that you would follow my same process above but also copy a second folder besides the one listed above (this time you would grab the one for the currency gadget) under %localappdata%\affected user\local\microsoft\windows\windows sidebar\cache. You would then paste the folder (overwriting if necessary) in the same location on the effected machine

Confirmed FIX. Just following your steps listed NO MORE, caused both the weather and currecny app to WORK.

Hi everyone,

I do not typically post on any type of forums but this issue really got me into some fun troubleshooting. I am an IT Engineer for the military so I just wanted to ensure anyone who gives this a shot that I have been a Windows expert for half of my life now. It SHOULD fix your issue, but if it does not it will not break anything so give it a shot if nothing else has worked for you.

 That said, I just spent 2 hours Googling and Binging trying to figure out why my father's stock weather gadget stopped working all of a sudden. Other machines in the house (all running Windows 7 Ultimate) were still working fine. This also affects the currency gagdet which he does not use.

I tried at least 7 different fixes that I read online...fixes from toggling your region settings, to disabling and re-enabling the gadget unchecking automatically detect in IE, to creating an elevated privs dword in the registry, to renaming the cache folder under app data\user\local\microsoft\windows live\services. Nothing worked. Cannot Connect to Service popped up whenever dragging out the gadget no matter what I attempted. I also read on numerous sites that Microsoft disabled the weather and currency gadget in a recent Windows update. I can confirm that this is NOT true. They recommend you stop using gadgets due to security vulnerabilities, but there is no AUTOMATIC update that will actually disable said two stock gadgets. There is however, a manual Fix It download from Microsoft you can install to perform the disabling of the gadgets. This is a manual download/install, not an automatic update.

So that brings me to what I did to fix it :-) So the renaming of the cache folder idea (which did not work) seemed like an idea I could expand upon. I tried a few different things and finally found the right combination of steps:

A) Copy the following files and folder from a Windows 7 machine with a working stock weather gadget to a flash drive or network file share:

1. %localappdata%\affected user\local\microsoft\windows\windows live\services\cache\config.xml (just copy the file)
2. %localappdata%\affected user\local\microsoft\windows\windows sidebar\cache\168522d5-1082-4df2-b2f6-9185c31f9472 (copy entire folder which should contain one or more xml files)
3. %localappdata%\affected user\local\microsoft\windows\windows sidebar\settings.ini (just copy the file)

B) Paste (OVERWRITING if necessary) the copied folder and files into the same locations on the machine whose stock weather gadget is not working.

C) Drag the weather gadget back out and this time it should be working

*** As I mentioned earlier, this issue effects both the weather and currency gadgets. I did not, however, attempt to fix the currency gadget. I would surmise that you would follow my same process above but also copy a second folder besides the one listed above (this time you would grab the one for the currency gadget) under %localappdata%\affected user\local\microsoft\windows\windows sidebar\cache. You would then paste the folder (overwriting if necessary) in the same location on the effected machine

Hi Karan Deep,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community.  

From your issue description I understand that, Gadgets does not work.

Let’s follow these methods and check if it fixes the issue.

Method 1: This may be caused due to the corruption of the gadget. You may try restoring the gadget.

a.    Right click on the gadget.

b.    Go to Properties.

c.    At the bottom of the window you will find a tab to Restore Gadgets Installed with Windows, click on it.

d.    This will restore it back to the default setting. This should get your weather Gadget working.

Method 2: Try changing the system locale to English (United States). Sometimes, simply changing system language locale alone is enough to solve the Weather gadget issue.

To change system locale,

a.    Open Region and Language by clicking the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking Clock, Language, and Region, and then clicking Region and Language.

b.    Click the Formats tab, and then, in the Format list, select the locale to use for the display of the date, time, currency, and measurements.

Also, refer to the suggestions from this link.

Windows 7 gadgets may not work or be displayed correctly

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2515657

Hope this will be helpful. If you still have further queries, please reply us and we will be happy to help you.