Windows Sidebar gadget not working in vista home premium(ie 64-bit OS)

Question

Hi All, I have developed a windows sidebar gadget which plays videos in a flash player, It works in vista home basic(32-bit OS) but doesn't work in vista home premium(64-bit OS). I use Flash Player 9 and Actionscript 3.0. Can anyone help me Please.

***This is the html content for the player***
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" width="130" height="200" id="FLVPlayer">
  <param name="movie" value="test.swf" />
  <param name="salign" value="lt" />
  <param name="quality" value="high" />
  <param name="scale" value="noscale" />
  <param name="FlashVars" value="&MM_ComponentVersion=1&skinName=Clear_Skin_1&streamName=2973&autoPlay=true&autoRewind=true" />
  <embed src="test.swf" flashvars="&MM_ComponentVersion=1&skinName=Clear_Skin_1&streamName=2973&autoPlay=true&autoRewind=true" quality="high" scale="noscale" width="130" height="200" name="FLVPlayer" salign="LT" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" />

Answer 1

The problem is likely due to x64 flash compatibility. Windows Vista/7 x64 versions run the x64 sidebar.exe by default -- which is absolutely terrible, not just because of the poor flash support but because of other compatibility issues too. Fortunately, the x86 version is also installed on x64 machines and can be found at the following location:

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

I have a couple of batch files that kill x64 sidebar and start x86. The basic one looks like this:

taskkill /f /IM sidebar.exe
pause
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Sidebar\sidebar.exe"

You could include something this simple with your gadget and ask your users if they want to run it to get your gadget working.