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.

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.