Weather gadget not working- Cannot connect to service

First of all, thank you very much for documenting the solution. I don't understand the problem either, but I have some observations to add.

In my case, I have two copies of the gadget running (Win 7, 32-bit). Both morphed into giving me the forecast, rather than the current weather conditions. Uninstalling one and reinstalling it produced the "Cannot connect to service" caption. The other continued to give me the forecast.

I did diffs on the files, and the settings.ini files were identical, while the changes in the .xml files seem trivial.

Adding the weather gadget to another user account on the same machine yielded the "Cannot connect" gadget.

I did the repair process stepwise.

I replaced the \cache\168522d5-1082-4df2-b2f6-9185c31f9472\.xml* files first, and the forecast gadget returned to normal operation after a restart. The "Cannot connect" gadget was unchanged. I don't know if the restart was necessary, or if I was just too careful/impatient.

I next replaced the config.xml file. The "Cannot connect" gadget returned to normal operation; no restart required.

I installed another copy of the gadget for a third location, and it also worked normally. Based on that, I doubt that malformation of the _wc-GMX*_.xml files are the problem.

Hint; I copied the files from another user account on the same machine, where the gadgets were working as expected; no second machine was required.

As a guess, the problem is related to a recent Windows update. The user account with the failing gadgets was the account in use at the time of the last automatic update, and the first account to be logged on after the update was completed and processed.

I can't reconcile that with the fact that your solution is two years old, and I just recently acquired the problem. Before that, the gadgets worked as expected on my machine (including activation on the "donor" account used in this process).

Whatever information corruption is responsible, it must exist in the template used to generate the first gadget of an account. Subsequent incarnations extend or copy the existing configuration files.

After using CCleaner it happened to me, appdata files are missing as of today. Gadgets worked fine until now.

I think this is what caused my weather gadget to stop working again after fixing it. Curious how many other people that have done the fix and had the weather gadget stop working again are using CCleaner?

I had thought CCleaner might be the reason my weather gadget stops working.  One time I remember the gadget stopped working soon after I ran CCleaner.  However I never lost any files as was reported in another post.   I was able to find the Config.xml file and again resave it to make the gadget work.

I then paid particular attention and I have run CCleaner many times without effecting the weather gadget.  So in my case I don't think CCleaner is causing the issue.  I will say that I have many items unchecked on CCleaner, meaning I do not use the default settings.  So if you (and anyone else) is sure it is breaking the gadget it may be worth figuring out which parameter is causing it.

After using CCleaner it happened to me, appdata files are missing as of today. Gadgets worked fine until now.

I think this is what caused my weather gadget to stop working again after fixing it. Curious how many other people that have done the fix and had the weather gadget stop working again are using CCleaner?