For those of you who these solutions did not work for here is what finally worked for me! I found that if I created a new user account the gadgets worked fine so I knew it was an issue with the account settings. I found the folder where Windows stores the individual sidebar settings and discovered a settings.ini file in \app data\local\microsoft\windows sidebar for the user account. This controls the startup of the sidebar for the user. I terminated sidebar.exe using task manager, moved the file to the desktop (just in case it was needed) and then restarted sidebar (right click desktop and choose gadgets). I had no initial gadgets but when I added gadgets now they worked just fine. I then deleted the settings.ini from my desktop.
Gadgets not working properly 
