Fix Vista Sidebar Weather Gadget Service Not Available with Patched wlsrvc.dll Download

Windows Vista comes with a built-in weather gadget for Windows Sidebar, which display local temperature and weather condition directly on desktop. However, since the RTM of Windows Vista, even after release of Windows Vista SP1 and beta availability of Windows Vista SP2, the weather gadget does not work on system installed with non-US locale or location.

Weather Gadget Service Not Available

When Windows Vista is configured with non-US or non-North America location, or using non-English (US) language locale, weather gadget will display “Service Not Available” error message. The issue happens because wlsrvc.dll file will check the location setting. If the location of the system set to India or China, the DLL file will return status 1506, indicating weather service is not available in your language or region.

Ironically, the weather gadget works before the RTM of Windows Vista, i.e. in Windows Vista betas and RC builds. Thus, to solve and fix the weather gadget not working problem in Windows Vista Sidebar, resolution is pretty simple – just use the wlsrvc.dll from the pre-RTM builds of Windows Vista. You no need to download the old unstable beta or RC builds again, as the file has been extracted and hosted for free download. In fact, the wlsrvc.dll version 6.0.6000.16386 from Windows Vista RTM has been patched in order to work to provide weather service across the world.

  1. Close and exit Windows Sidebar.
  2. Open Windows Explorer.
  3. Browse to C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar folder.
  4. Take ownership and grant full permission to you on wlsrvc.dll file.
  5. Rename wlsrvc.dll to wlsrvc.dll.old.
  6. Download the patched wlsrvc.dll (contains inside the wlsrvc.zip).
  7. Copy the patched wlsrvc.dll into the Windows Sidebar folder.
  8. Run the sidebar.exe to restart Windows Sidebar.

Weather Gadget Working All Over the World


This entry was posted on Monday, December 29th, 2008 at 1:26 am and is filed under Windows Vista. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

17 Responses to “Fix Vista Sidebar Weather Gadget Service Not Available with Patched wlsrvc.dll Download”

  1. new
    October 30th, 2009 07:20
    17

    Can’t take owner ship of the file extention, as ticking the ‘allow’ row in the file properties is not even an option. any solution?

  2. tae
    September 26th, 2009 21:54
    16

    vista is useless.. completely useless!

  3. Ramon Balthazar
    September 15th, 2009 23:23
    15

    I can not change the permisions of the dll :(

  4. tito
    July 14th, 2009 10:37
    14

    it is very nice trick..thanks

  5. PK-JIN
    July 11th, 2009 15:42
    13

    AWESOME!!! Thanks ALOT!!!

  6. PK-JIN
    July 11th, 2009 15:38
    12

    I wonder if the dll file from Windows 7 works…

  7. wert
    June 28th, 2009 00:20
    11

    I use Vista X64. Per your suggestion I put patched wlsrvc.dll in Program Files (x86)\Windows Sidebar folder, but it didn’t work either. It keeps saying Getting data.. and Currency gadget says Service not available. Anyone found a resolution to this?

  8. ZhongguoRen
    June 5th, 2009 22:02
    10

    For those who uses Vista 64, the patched wlsrvc.dll is for 32 bit Vista only, so copy it to your Program Files (x86)\windows sidebar, and try again.

  9. Suicide-Squad
    June 1st, 2009 07:06
    9

    This fix works perfectly. No special notes here.
    Thankyou very much for this fix.
    It is a shame that microsoft leave these fixes for other users that don´t have nothing to do with microsoft programmers team lol :P

  10. Assassin09
    April 29th, 2009 00:01
    8

    Thanks! Worked perfectly!!

  11. Teodor Bochev
    April 20th, 2009 20:09
    7

    I can not change the permisions of the dll :(

  12. ChineseBoy
    April 7th, 2009 14:02
    6

    It worked for me,3ks a lot

  13. Raghu
    March 25th, 2009 15:10
    5

    Surprising it dint work for me either… can u please give me some other suggestion

  14. Isaac
    March 19th, 2009 23:27
    4

    Any idea why the temperature and weather graphic indicator would not change? I can tell its night or day, but all other information simply never changes (it’s been clear and 23 degrees for two months now).

    Thanks!

  15. ryon
    March 5th, 2009 02:12
    3

    Worked for me, THANKS

  16. shachar
    February 2nd, 2009 03:44
    2

    suprisingly it didn’t work

  17. Vista Sidebar Weather Gadget Service Not Available » My Digital Life
    December 29th, 2008 09:23
    1

    [...] For users who need to use non-English as system language or locale, there is a hack to make weather gadget works everywhere. [...]

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