Any way to enforce Windows 7 to run 32-bit sidebar.exe?

2

Is there any way to enforce Windows 7 to run 32-bit sidebar.exe instead of 64-bit?

user626528

Posted 2011-03-03T14:53:10.800

Reputation: 783

Why?, do you have some gadgets that are only 32bit? – Moab – 2011-03-03T16:49:46.460

Not that anyone has to explain or justify any question they ever ask on any stack exchange site ever - but i am curious why. – Ian Boyd – 2011-11-10T14:00:32.497

When we needed this to happen it was because one of our gadgets had a Silverlight control in it, and Silverlight (pre version 5) is 32 bit only – Matthew Steeples – 2011-11-10T14:42:14.147

Counter to this question, I would rather find out how to force the 64-bit version to run. I just noticed that on a 64-bit laptop, the 32-bit version of the sidebar is running instead of the 64-bit version. I can’t recall how it was set to autorun, but I don’t think it was by manually adding the startup entry; it was probably through an official mechanism like an autorun check-box or something. Curious. – Synetech – 2013-11-28T03:50:51.913

Answers

3

You can use regedit to edit the following registry key:

\\HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
Item name : SideBar

and change the value of SideBar to this:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Sidebar\sidebar.exe" /autoRun

(The only change is loading sidebar.exe from c:\program files (x86)\instead of c:\program files\)

Dave

Posted 2011-03-03T14:53:10.800

Reputation: 46

Asked: 2011-03-03T14:53:10.800

Viewed: 2 202 times

Active: 2016-03-13T12:02:03.520