Vista Sidebar Restoration

Every Windows iterations brought about new features. Even if there were some controversies regarding stability and resource usage, Vista was the first iteration to present gadgets through a dedicated sidebar. If you’re still using it on modern Windows versions, Vista Sidebar Restoration can help you back up your gadget layout, and restore it at the press of a button.

Sure enough the application is dedicated to Windows Vista, especially since later iterations of Windows made this an optional feature. However, you can still benefit from desktop gadgets with applications like Thoosje Sidebar even in recent Windows installments, just as you did in Vista.

A compact main window shows up on launch, with only a button available to press, which is already fully described, making accommodation take less than a couple of seconds. The gadgets sidebar doesn’t really need to be active, and it’s closed during backup anyway, so that no errors occur in the process.

When the backup file is created a sound alerts you, but it doesn’t take too long to finish so you don’t really have time to switch to a different task. A new button becomes available after creating the first backup, which is used to restore settings according to saved configurations.

Note that you can only keep one backup type, and every time you want to create a new one, the old file is replaced without confirmation. You can’t view the actual backup file in order to unpack it on other computers. What’s more, all external gadgets need to be installed for the restoration process to be successful.

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that Vista Sidebar Restoration gets the job done fast, and with little effort. However, since gadgets are used less with modern Windows iterations, overall practicality is on a downward spiral. Only one backup file can be created at a time, and restoring requires all external gadgets to be installed.