Why there are two instances of Sidebar.exe running
Are you’re wondering why there are two instances of Sidebar.exe process showing up in the Task Manager? If so, this post is for you.
If you use Process Explorer from Windows Sysinternals, you can see that the second instance of Sidebar.exe runs as a child process under the main Sidebar.exe process. Task Manager simply lists all processes in a list-view fashion. So you can’t identify the process parent using Task Manager.
Process Explorer screenshot
Few months back I learnt from Mark that the Windows Vista Sidebar consists of two processes, one Sidebar.exe process that hosts the Windows Gadgets and a child Sidebar.exe process for third-party Gadgets. The child Sidebar.exe process does not start automatically unless you load a third-party Gadget.
For testing purposes, I killed the child Sidebar.exe process. This closed all the third-party Gadgets, but left the system default Gadgets running. Then Windows Vista immediately showed the following dialog box:
Sidebar experienced a problem with one of the gadgets in the list below. Try to find the gadget that you think caused the problem and remove it from Sidebar.
It listed out all the third-party Gadgets that were running under the child Sidebar.exe process.
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