Yahoo! Widgets Off the Screen! (And How to Get Them Back)

I like Yahoo! Widgets (formerly known as “Konfabulator”). I use XP for some time to come and thus don’t have the option to use Vista’s widgets (the only thing in Vista that currently has some draw to it is DirectX 10, but I digress..). Every now and then a widget “gets lost”. For example, when starting a program (like a game) that changes the display resolution, the widgets get tossed around seemingly randomly, and sometimes they end up outside of the active (and possibly maximum) resolution of the display. Closing a widget and reopening it won’t help. Uninstalling Yahoo! Widget Engine probably helps, but who wants to do that regularly? There’s an easy registry fix (and if the problem is frequent, one could even write a small batch file that would place the widgets at their desired locations).

Shut down Widget Engine first (also from the system tray), then find the following key in your registry with regedit (you may want to use search especially if the system has many users and thus many SIDs).

The keys that determine the widget locations can be found at

HKEY_USERS
user’s security ID, or “SID”,
… e.g. S-1-5-21-1482476501-362288127-1801674531-1233

Software
Yahoo
Widget Engine
Widgets
widget name, e.g. “Calendar”
Windows
Main Windows

Positions <- delete this binary value

Then restart Widget Engine (and reload the “lost” widget if it’s not loaded by default). It the default placement is in the middle of the screen (or middle of the “active” screen on some multi-monitor systems).

Disclaimer: As always, the usual disclaimers and warnings apply to any registry mods. Know what you’re doing since it is possible to destroy your Windows installation with careless registry edits.

8 thoughts on “Yahoo! Widgets Off the Screen! (And How to Get Them Back)”

  1. Thanks so much for this! I accidentally moved a widget to the side the pressed it’s “close drawer” button and it ended up moving off the screen. I was like… F********************CK!

    But yeah. THanks!

  2. I tried this solution but no luck, the widget is off screen still. I even tried pasting the location of a visible widget in the registry but still no good.

    It works fine on my desktop PC but not on my notebook.

    Thinking the widget might be bad at the Yahoo site, I copied the one that works from my desktop PC to the notebook. That didn’t work either. Neither did deleting and reinstalling the widget after deleting the entire registry entry for it.

    HELP!!!

    The widget is Weatherbug.

  3. Hi Greg! Are you sure the missing widget is running and not just off the screen? I’ve had instances where a particular widget is just MIA – doesn’t start for no good reason.

  4. I came across this post after I had the same problem and wanted to add something…

    It seems that even if you go to the registry and make the change, the widget engine will re-record the current offscreen location of your widget when you close.

    I was able to fix it by hitting ctrl-alt-delete and ending the process of the widget you are using. They are all called “YahooWidgets.exe” under the Processes tab so you may have to experiment a few times to find the right one.

    Stop your lost widget’s process from here, then go to the registry and either delete the position or copy and paste the position of a working widget. Close registry editor and start the lost widget and it should show up again.

  5. My Yahoo Weather moved off screen too for some odd reason and could not bring it back till I found your blog entry! THANK YOU!!! MUCH APPRECIATED for posting the solution!

  6. I found this site looking for a method to find a missing widget, but I didn’t want to go edit the registry so I searched a bit more and came up with this answer that doesn’t require registry editing.

    “I also use an extra monitor at work and this problem happens to me all the time.
    But if you press F8, the key that is supposed to bring all widgets to front, you will see the bottom of your Weather Widget on the top of the screem. From there you can drag it back in the screen. Hope that helps ;)”

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