[CAPNCRUNCH]

I knew that; (“that” being it HAD to be somewhere else…) was the reason, just never found the damn folder! Had looked elsewhere though…

I recall when the switch came long ago away from the simple XP – root/Documents And Settings/Start Menu folder hierarchy – man it took asking someone (as I did here…) to figure out what happened to the start menu in Vistax64 (before I immediately dumped that slow bloatware release for WS08x64, albeit with the same file structure…)

An old dog new tricks they say. Really, I suppose with 30 years doing this I should be some sort of Admiral, but I find with everything in life that I merely brush off, ignore, or simply “selectively forget” those things that matter least to me; or perhaps I simply am incapable of retention of too many things these days…

Thanks so much for posting that for me, I know I will not selectively forget that, but at my age, perhaps memory-loss might set in and kill the information…

Cheers! As I expected, Game Explorer, the cheesy MS games and everything but the “Sniper” is as it would be in Win7 (save the Superfetch and a few other more bloated features…) I think I should post on one of my blogs a much more direct route to installing the bid sniper (not that I would ever use Microsoft’s anyway…) as the link provided here has instructions that no offense to the writer for I am sure he/she easily understands them, they truly are complete gibberish and if you followed them literally with no interpretation, it is impossible for what is posted there to work…

Heck, use something like Harvex (NO, NO affiliation…) if you are an eBay freak anyway!

Thanks go out to the entire community here, you have all been a great resource that I have not given enough thanks to, but MANY, MANY referrals… 🙂

[CAPNCRUNCH]

Doh, why that didn’t occur to me is likly because I couldn’t see the forest for the trees in front of me!!!!

The only thing I might wonder – and assume is that I should have shortcuts in the Program Data – Start Menu Folder as well correct?

The reason I ask this is really unrelated, for I just noticed the other day that W7 has a mysterious way of adding Start Menu entries WITHOUT them ever being in the Program Data/Microsoft/Windows/Start Menu/Programs folder and that I found quite amazing how in fact that might work!

I am certain I will have it up and running in 30 or so seconds, thanks for taking time to answer a question that should never have come from a 30 year veteran… (showing my age; and stupidity as well – makes one wonder how I’ve done this so long1)

Thanks again!

[CAPNCRUNCH]

@deltatux wrote:

thanks for the response.

Yes I have (downloaded and installed it on the 26th) however my Games window is blank even though I’ve already got several games installed. How do I fix them without reinstalling everything :S?

Thanks,
deltatux

Hey I am in the same boat as the picture denotes above, don’t know why for certain… Your initial post (before I made it down to the new wonderful powershell type installer (kudos BTW for all of those…) were a bit vague, apparently only for me on where to place the slic.dll’s at, the individual game folders or in their /en-US sub-directory…

These things always(only) happen to me it appears; ran the same procedure on another machine with Windows 7 installed that the feature had ALWAYS been broken no matter how many times I installed and removed it and it now it works with no issues, so I don’t know what went wrong with the Server R2 x64 install…

I currently am at the point where I re-ran the .bat, the default games are there (I likely will not install many – or ANY others…) but thought I would wait to hear back with any ideas of what might be going on and a definitive answer to a very tired man’s question regarding which folder the slic.dll’s go in, the game’s root, or the /en-US. (The Game Explorer opens but is empty as in the picture quoted above…)

I hate to post this at all for the thread is written well, same goes for the script and instructions; they have been proven time and time again. Merely correcting a problematic Win 7 non-functional Game Explorer should be enough for me to realize that…

Any help would be appreciated as I would love to put this to bed as I move forward (last on my list of little change overs in R2…)

[CAPNCRUNCH]

Sure isn’t; I have gotten all sources from Microsoft directly and still find repeatability since this started. Oddly enough, even though this last and final install on the giant server workstation was “brand new stuff” directly from Microsoft again. The only time I did not have problems as described in my original post was when installing the leaked RTM; no problems with the sidebar allowing me to download and install additional gadgets. While perplexing and annoying, there is a work-around for the issue, but there shouldn’t need be one.

I only wished someone else would stumble across this issue and post here so we could get to the bottom of the conflict causing it. It pretty well has to be associated with something unique to my systems and I wouldn’t know what that is; ESPECIALLY since it has exhibited itself on a friend’s laptop as well. Very strange indeed! Perhaps when this first manifested I should have dug up the old leaked RTM and looked for repeatability…

I am not new to this game at all, 30 years doing this and I ran WS08x64 ENT as a workstation before most had imagined it (Vista was absolutely unusable for what we needed, yet we needed a workable 64-bit OS – other than at that time the wonderfully orphaned OS of Windows XP-Pro-64…)

As mentioned before, if and when I have time I will crank up VS and step through an install of a gadget and take a look at what the problem might be. The only thing at all I can imagine is perhaps a conflict with .7zip or WinRar which are two apps always installed ASAP. Don’t really know and cannot fathom a guess at this point…

[CAPNCRUNCH]

As per the norm, issues such as this seem to only crop up for me, for I see little to no activity in this thread. So all things being the same, while it would seem no one else is experiencing this annoying issue, I have found a work-around for anyone out there that becomes plagues with this issue themselves. After running the .cmd file to install the sidebar, do not start it and/or be certain it is shut down. You may install gadgets that DO NOT reside in the sidebar that are not the native gadgets included with the release. Once you have installed your favorite non-default gadgets to the desktop, you can close them and open the sidebar. From there you will see that they appear and in the prior step you’ll find you won’t receive the “unspecified error” message while installing your favorite gadgets to the desktop with the sidebar closed.

I hope this helps someone out there, I have not had the time to try and properly debug this issue, but for now this is a feasible work-around that can be used so you can install your favorite gadgets to the sidebar.

If this is unclear at all, please post in this thread; likewise I implore anyone having this problem to post to the thread as well so perhaps we can start to troubleshoot this issue and put an end to it for the few it would seem that are affected… Thanks in advance.

Kind regards,

CAP’N’CRUNCH

[CAPNCRUNCH]

Bump bump (sorry I know that is “taboo” but I have a bit of an update;) don’t know how it helps find the root cause, but it is interesting. The one machine that new gadgets would install on, the OS didn’t jive on this server; ironically I ran a brand new install, now the OS runs like a top, but it is replicating the “Unspecified Error” BS when trying to install any gadgets other than what comes with the OS; any help appreciated!

Thanks
ME

[CAPNCRUNCH]

Yes, I get just the opposite; has been exhibited on two machines so far, a long, long wait and then an “unspecified error” which without bothering to really debug things, shows no where in the Event Log or elsewhere… Happens on any gadgets except those already installed. Really weird and unexplained for me; I am surprised with me seeing it on 2 machines so far that no one else has. Due to that issue and several other strange bugs, I have stuck with WS08x64 ENT. – NO R2…

Wish I knew what the heck the deal was with it. The only machine that did NOT act this way, R2 won’t run on due to all sorts of driver issues. So, while I “like” R2, it does not like our operations whatsoever; everything still running WS08x64 R1…

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