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

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October 30th, 2009 07:20
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?
September 26th, 2009 21:54
vista is useless.. completely useless!
September 15th, 2009 23:23
I can not change the permisions of the dll
July 14th, 2009 10:37
it is very nice trick..thanks
July 11th, 2009 15:42
AWESOME!!! Thanks ALOT!!!
July 11th, 2009 15:38
I wonder if the dll file from Windows 7 works…
June 28th, 2009 00:20
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?
June 5th, 2009 22:02
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.
June 1st, 2009 07:06
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
April 29th, 2009 00:01
Thanks! Worked perfectly!!
April 20th, 2009 20:09
I can not change the permisions of the dll
April 7th, 2009 14:02
It worked for me,3ks a lot
March 25th, 2009 15:10
Surprising it dint work for me either… can u please give me some other suggestion
March 19th, 2009 23:27
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!
March 5th, 2009 02:12
Worked for me, THANKS
February 2nd, 2009 03:44
suprisingly it didn’t work
December 29th, 2008 09:23
[...] For users who need to use non-English as system language or locale, there is a hack to make weather gadget works everywhere. [...]