keyboard shortcut to open sidebar doesn't work

this is copied and pasted right from windows help and support

You can also open Windows Sidebar by clicking the Start button

, typing sidebar in the search box, and then pressing ENTER.

Click to expand...

It also says:

To bring gadgets to the front using a keyboard shortcut Press the Windows Logo key

+SPACEBAR.

Click to expand...

I have also read the same thing throughout the web which comfirms that this is the right keyboard shortcut.

So I have all the information that tells me how to open windows sidebar using a keyboard shortcut the problem is nothing happens when I do it. I went to my other computer running vista and as soon as I did the shortcut windows sidebar popped right up.

The computer I am using is about 1 week old, the first thing I did was update it so it should be fully updated and I can confirm right now it has SP2 and windows update says there are no updates available (which is surprising since vista seems to have hourly updates). There is nothing wrong with the windows key or space bar key as they both work independently and for other shortcut combinations.

If anyone knows of a fix I would be grateful to know it as the sidebar is useless to me if I don't have a keyboard shortcut to access it.

Would creating a short cut be of any help?

Create keyboard shortcuts to open programs

That is a work around and something that I too just thought of and tried it out. Right now I'm using ctrl-alt-s to open windows sidebar. It works but i am a little confused why the built in windows way doesn't work and would rather use that way. Thanks for the suggestion and I will continue using this until I can figure out what's wrong but if anyone knows how to correct this I am still interested in knowing

Here is a solution for little problems, which is what this is. Go to search, type cmd. When you see CMD, right click,....run as adminstrator. Then in CMD type this

sfc /scannow. It is a computer command to look for errors, report and fix If you get a report with errors, run at least 3 time. It can only fix one problem at a time.

Keep us posted.

I rememeber sfc /scannow... i used to work for tech support for HP back in the days of XP. we used to run sfc /scannow to get the person off the phone because we didn't have an answer for them and the scan always took forever so we told them to let it run and check on it later. they never bought it and it rarely worked. But even still it does have a purpose so I ran it (3 times) and all 3 times it said there wasn't any "integrity violations" and there are no changes with how windows + spacebar works

Another work-around is to click Start, just put an s in the search pane, and click Enter.

Imperfect1 said:

Another work-around is to click Start, just put an s in the search pane, and click Enter.

Click to expand...

hitting start then putting in an 's' in the search pane begins to search for 's' items. if you click enter ignoring the search results the first item will open. Maybe on your computer it is 'sidebar' but on mine it is "Windows Meeting Space"

regardless i'm not really looking for "workarounds" but instead correcting the problem. I have a good enough workaround in effect right now but I still would rather use windows key + spacebar

You're right, my first item is Sidebar, so apparently that's why it opens --- sorry, just trying to help. And work-arounds are handy tools to allow you to perform the function, while you're trying to fix the actual problem.

I installed ms office 2007 and now it works... go figure. The weird part of it was office was already preinstalled with the computer just the student edition. I removed that and installed the office I had (enterprise edition). So maybe there was something in the enterprise edition that refreshed this key combo or something. I don't really consider "installing office 2007 enterprise edition" a viable solution so i'm not too impress with that but sometimes the results are more important than the method. thanks for the help and all your work-arounds.