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I’m not a big fan of sidebars (I even uninstalled the Google Sidebar recently), but I’m sure many of you like to have certain tools readily available. The next version of Windows, Vista, will have such a sidebar available and will include, among other things, a clock, a slideshow viewer, desktop search, and an RSS feed reader. Want the Vista sidebar in XP? Then follow these simple instructions.

1. Download the Vista sidebar, and decompress it (it’s a RAR file).
2. Copy the decompressed folder into the Program Files directory (C:\Program Files\).
3. Now go to the Users folder, and under your username create a new folder named Parts (C:\Documents and Settings\Martin in my case), and copy the files from C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\Parts into this folder.
4. Download this patch and put it in the Windows Sidebar folder mentioned above, then run the file named Patch (and do as it says).
5. Next up, download XMLRW.DLL (I’m hosting it on TipMonkies, at least for now) and place it into the Windows Sidebar folder. This file is part of Internet Explorer 7, so if you have that beta, just get it from your own IE7 folder.
6. Now just run the sidebar (C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\sidebar.exe) and click the plus sign to load the widgets!