Weather gadget not working- Cannot connect to service

I understand Microsoft is working on it and may not like an outsider finding a fix. They will probably push an update soon to correct the problem anyway so most people who don't really love that darn little weather gadget thing the way my father does, then it is probably good to wait for an official fix. 

That said here is a possible theory behind how the gadget may have gotten corrupted that I wrote on here the other day for those that may not have read it: It would also make sense that the recent update that "broke" the gadget caused this fault in the gadget while it was in the process of updating weather information.

"Before I overwrote the files I did notice that both my dad's config.xml and system.ini files seemed to be missing some information when compared to mine. Also, inside the weather gadget cache folder was three xml files on my machine while his did not have any. I am still not sure what happened, but my guess would be the the gadget hit a fault, crashed and auto-restarted. I noticed that when the gadget looks for a temperature update the xml files inside the cache change (time stamp). This appears to be controlled by the settings.ini file. Perhaps while in the middle of an update, the weather gadget hit it's fault. That would explain the missing information and the missing xml files in the cache."

While at work today I took a break and asked one of the best software engineers at my company about this and he said that my theory is highly plausible. Regardless, I read Thu's statement above...

"I have the weather gadget broken on TWO PCs. No working copies for me. Perhaps your "working" is due to a cache? Go to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Cache and then reboot. That will clear all the cache and perhaps "break it."

and can confirm that removing or deleting the contents of the cache does not break it again. I have tried it on 4 machines today to confirm that statement. The weather gadget's cache populates with information by looking at either the config.xml and settings.ini files (maybe both). If those files have all required information in them (my dad's was missing several lines of code) then the cache should rebuild automatically. I do not want to upset Microsoft, but in the last two days (between this and several other similar threads) my fix has corrected at least 20 machines without any issues. If one is worried about trying the fix, simply make a backup copy of the two files as well as the weather cache folder. That way if it does not work for you, you can revert back to your old data (that also did not work).

For Grantclan - Since I have not tried pulling the two files and the cache folder from a Windows backup...I cannot explain why this fix did not work for you other than the fact perhaps your settings.ini and config.xml may not have all the necessary information in them. Honestly, you are the only person I have seen who this is not worked for so far. If you still are interested in getting this working i would suggest asking a friend or family member who has Windows 7 with a functional gadget to make you a copy of the config.xml, settings.ini, and weather gadget cache folder. Another method would be for them to simply zip up the two files and the cache folder and email you the attachment. It would be a small file.

I have tried using the Windows 7's backup.  No avail.

Can you zip up YOUR copy and upload it to your Skydrive?

If all else fails, probably best to wait for Microsoft who will issue a "permanent" fix (hopefully).

Edit: If you "close" the weather gadget and re-open it, does it remain "fixed"?

Try this:

Delete cache, close weather gadget, reboot computer, re-open weather gadget.  I'm thinking of ways to "break" the gadget ;)

Okay I created a .zip file with the cache directory and the two files for you...the same ones that I used to fix my father's computer the other night so we know those work. I have uploaded it to my SkyDrive

And yes, of course I closed the weather gadget and re-opened it to test if my fix would still work after exiting the application. I tried that several times. I also made sure the sidebar.exe process tree was indeed not running before relaunching the gadget.

Today, to test it further in attempt to "break" the gadget,  I manually deleted the Weather gadget cache, and after relaunching the gadget everything still worked like a charm; the cache was rebuilt once it retrieved the information needed from it's Internet weather source.

https://skydrive.live.com/embed?cid=25F54624219FE514&resid=25F54624219FE514%21137&authkey=AMxWC28Yam4S118