One thing I noticed with 7 is that I could never get the gadgets to work. Then when I did a fresh install to a new drive, I could access them at first. Strange!

Then when I rebooted, they were gone! A little Googling and I found that it happens when you completely disable UAC.

In order to fix it, you have to enter in the following registry key under:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Sidebar\Settings

Create a DWORD entry:

'AllowElevatedProcess' and give it a value of 1.

Right click on the desktop, select 'Gadgets' and there she is!