Kernel Confusion

Designing a Windows 7 Client can be quite complicated, especially when you face a customer that wants to set everything there is to match his vision. In this particular case the customer wanted build-in Windows 7 Gadgets which connect to the internet not to appear in the Gadget list.

A little searching didn’t help me, I even found a TechNet thread where a Microsoft colleague stated that there is no way to turn single gadgets on and off, you can just disable the whole feature.

As a techie I wasn’t satisfied with that answer and pulled Sysinternals Process Monitor out of my sleeve… well, a USB stick. If a user right-clicks a gadget in the list, he is presented with a uninstall option. Using this one will add the filename of the gadget to the settings.ini in “%userprofile%\Windows Sidebar”.

So my solution is to use a Group Policy (Extention) to edit the .ini-file as I need it. Look at the [Root] section and the “PickerDefaultPackageSkipList” property. There you can add all the Gadgets you don’t want to see in the list.

Example:

PickerDefaultPackageSkipList=”Weather.Gadget,Currency.Gadget,”

This will remove the Weather- and Currency-Gadget from the list. Of course, the user can still re-add this one, but you could also delete the files as well. From here you can customize the solution to your needs.

Go Go Gadgetto Blogpost!