How To Disable The Windows Vista Sidebar At Startup
Published by Steve
I must admit that I’m not a massive fan of the ‘revolutionary’ new sidebar that was introduced into Windows Vista. I can’t say I’ve ever truly found a single decent use for it other than to help make my Windows desktop look a little more attractive. If you’re looking to disable the Windows Vista Sidebar - well, disable it from booting up when Windows Vista starts up - then this quick tutorial will do the trick.
First you need to be looking at your Windows desktop environment and have your Windows Sidebar activated for this to work; provided you meet this criteria, we can proceed. Right mouse click anywhere within your sidebar to bring up a menu and go to Properties.
You should now be looking at the main Windows Vista Sidebar Properties menu. You’re more than welcome to tweak and tune your Windows Sidebar any way you see fit but for the purpose of this tutorial I will only be covering how to disable it.
I don’t doubt you’ve already worked out how to do this but just for clarification: all you need to do is uncheck the option at the top of the menu that says Start Sidebar when Windows starts; by doing so you will be preventing the Windows Vista Sidebar from starting up with Windows ever again - unless of course you re-enable it.
You can however still manually activate your Windows Sidebar by going to Start > All Programs > Accessories > Windows Sidebar.
This item was filed under: Windows Vista
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Comments and Discussions
At present, a total of 3 comments have been posted.
My Windows Sidebar has been replaced on my Vaio VGN NR11S by a Google Sidebar. If I try to bring up the Windows version, I am told that the Administrator only can do this. That’s me!!
How do I do it - does anyone know?
Alan.
Same as above - Uninstalled Google (it came pre-installed on the laptop) - all of it.
Removed it’s registry entries - all of them.
I’ve even tried to take ownewrship of the windows sidebar folder and files (these were not executable even by the system admin - thanks Google!!)
Looked for policy files - none that I can see.
I STILL get the message that the sidebar can only be changed by an admin. BTW - I am logging in as the administrator.
Same here, I have a sony vaio fz21m and basically have the same problem. I try opening “windows sidebar” and it give me somt crap about having to be logged on as administrator which i clearly already am. Why is there a “google sidebar” as well as a “windows sidebar”. Such an annoyance and still found no solution to this day. Hope someone can help.