Blog Entry
Apr 18

XM Online Radio For Google Sidebar / Windows XP

Posted in Gadgets, XM Online Radio

You read it right. We now have the XM Online Radio available for Google Sidebar. This means you can run it on Windows XP! It’s not quite as nice as its Vista cousin, but this gadget still maintains favorites, stream settings, all your favorite buttons, and is pretty stable and easy to use. You will need to download and install Google Desktop if you aren’t already running it.

Download XM Online Radio 1.0 (Google Gadget)

Enjoy! :)

P.S.:  Do let us know if there are any issues and we’ll do our best to resolve them.  Thanks.


This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 11:13 am
and is filed under Gadgets, XM Online Radio.



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71 Responses to “XM Online Radio For Google Sidebar / Windows XP”

  1. Dr M. RavinderKumar Says:
    April 18th, 2008 at 11:32 am

    in what way,lets hear onlineradio thaen i shall give comments

  2. confused Says:
    April 18th, 2008 at 5:51 pm

    i went here http://www.buildagadget.com/Blog/xmonlineradio and it didnt work. i dont understand with all the versions and stuff.

  3. The Staff Says:
    April 18th, 2008 at 6:14 pm

    If you need the Google gadget, use the link on this post, if you need the Vista version, try the download link either on the side or the latest version (or just use the download links on that page).

  4. ykw Says:
    April 19th, 2008 at 12:06 am

    Love the Vista gadget (continuing to push it at various XM fora), but putting the Google version on my XP machines and attempting to log in results in a “Connection Error” each and every time.

  5. Philip Says:
    April 19th, 2008 at 12:58 pm

    keep getting a connection error when using the google gadget version.

  6. ykw Says:
    April 19th, 2008 at 3:37 pm

    Never mind my previous post; for whatever reason, the gadget is working just fine everywhere it’s installed today. (shrug)

  7. confused Says:
    April 20th, 2008 at 10:24 am

    thanks… got it fine now. its a bit confusing telling where to go on here.

    to the people who had the connection errors, i think that it was because xm online was down all of yesterday morning. should work now.

  8. Compaholic Says:
    April 20th, 2008 at 2:12 pm

    When I run the file downloaded from this page I get the following error:

    Google Gadget Setup
    Invalid gadget package

    What am I missing?

  9. Compaholic Says:
    April 20th, 2008 at 5:54 pm

    Also, if it helps.

    My version:
    Google Desktop 5.7.0802.22438-en-pb

    What version was this gadget made for?

  10. The Staff Says:
    April 21st, 2008 at 10:30 am

    Compaholic, the minimum version of Google Desktop for the gadget is 5.1.0.0. We built and tested it with the latest version of the desktop, so it’s kind of a wierd problem if it’s saying it’s invalid. We’ll look into it though.

  11. ykw Says:
    April 21st, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    Weird. It seems to need to be activated and removed twice on each and every XP PC before “taking” and being functional (i.e., no “connection error”) on the third install. (Doesn’t seem related to any issues with XMRO proper; just had the same issue on a new machine this morning when XMRO was functioning fine.)

    Granted, my testing universe consists of a whopping four machines…

  12. chanelle Says:
    April 23rd, 2008 at 9:35 pm

    ok, i have xm radio in my car. I had it online for the free trial but now i can’t even remember my username, so how do i get it back???

  13. The Staff Says:
    April 24th, 2008 at 12:25 am

    Chanelle, it should be the same username you sign into XM with to manage your account. Barring that, maybe contact XM and see if you can get it that way?

  14. tyler Says:
    April 24th, 2008 at 8:58 am

    where do i get the one for vista?

  15. The Staff Says:
    April 24th, 2008 at 10:01 am

    Tyler, try out this post: http://www.buildagadget.com/Blog/archives/75

  16. Keith Says:
    April 25th, 2008 at 9:44 am

    Am I missing something or is there no way to scroll through the channel listing. I don’t have a scroll bar on the side of the listing. I can only see up to channel 9

  17. The Staff Says:
    April 25th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    Keith, there should be a scroll bar on the flyout. Then again, we used the autoscroll option which can be finicky in certain versions of the sidebar. Try undocking the gadget and see if the scroll bar shows up then. You might also need to update your version of Google Desktop.

  18. Keith Says:
    April 25th, 2008 at 2:25 pm

    That was it. I needed to updated the Google Desktop. Thanks!

  19. Compaholic Says:
    May 2nd, 2008 at 11:45 pm

    I got it working… After I rebooted I tried running again and it installed this time. It works pretty good thanks!

  20. Nekki K. Says:
    May 9th, 2008 at 7:37 am

    So for some reason, every time I restart Google Desktop (either via restarting the computer or Desktop), XM radio will not start. I mean, I can click on the “start” button and select my radio station, but it won’t play anything. ONly when i remove it from the sidebar and add the gadget again will it work. I have the latest version of Desktop (got it this morning). Any help?

  21. Sean Says:
    May 15th, 2008 at 7:24 am

    Cool gadget but it doesn’t work after reboot my machine.

    Anyone else getting this bug?

    - I see “Click here to start”
    - I pick a channel, the list slides back and it still says “Click here to start.”

    Only solution is to choose “reset everything”, re-enter user name & password, then it functions correctly.

  22. The Staff Says:
    May 15th, 2008 at 10:01 am

    Sean, it’s kind of a weird issue, you’re the second person to report it thus far. The current solution is to use the logout link from the links flyout by clicking the XM logo on the top of the gadget, then just re-enter your password to login. This might be an issue witht he sidebar itself since the gadget is relying on the program to store all the variables, maybe some of the data is getting corrupted on restart. We’ll look into it.

  23. Tim Says:
    May 15th, 2008 at 2:47 pm

    I am having the same problem with the “Click Here to Start” after restarting the computer. For now, logging out and logging back in seems to work.

  24. Robert Says:
    May 15th, 2008 at 4:37 pm

    Hi, this is a nice looking gadget and it works well. I have been using a Yahoo! widget for XM for a long time, but I wanted to test Google’s gadgets.

    Anyway, I have a feature request for you. When I’m sitting at my desk I have XM playing over speakers on a home audio system. But the satellite receiver is in another room far away. Is there any way you can add a feature to display the current song/artist without actually playing the stream?

    I can do this with the Yahoo! widget just by pressing the stop button. It stops playing the audio, but keeps showing the current song title and artist.

    Don’t suggest simply turning the volume down because that keeps the stream playing, and consuming processor cycles that I would rather apply to something more useful.

    Thanks for your consideration.

  25. The Staff Says:
    May 15th, 2008 at 5:49 pm

    Robert, Thanks! We’ll consider the playing info, though even keeping the stream playing and just muting the volume shouldn’t be taking up that much in terms of processor on your machine. Beyond that, we’re working on some upgraded landing pages, at least one of which might interest you. We’ll announce them later on, but don’t worry, we’ll see what we can do. :)

  26. Jay in Atlanta Says:
    May 26th, 2008 at 10:18 am

    Add another person (me) to the growing list of people who hit “Click here to start” and nothing happens. Clicking on the XM logo to log back into XM fixes it, but we shouldn’t have to do that every time we boot up, right…?

    It’s a bug. Move past the denial phase. Call it CR #1 and add it to the v2.0 build :)

    # Sean Says:
    May 15th, 2008 at 7:24 am

    Cool gadget but it doesn’t work after reboot my machine.

    Anyone else getting this bug?

    - I see “Click here to start”
    - I pick a channel, the list slides back and it still says “Click here to start.”

    Only solution is to choose “reset everything”, re-enter user name & password, then it functions correctly.
    # The Staff Says:
    May 15th, 2008 at 10:01 am

    Sean, it’s kind of a weird issue, you’re the second person to report it thus far. The current solution is to use the logout link from the links flyout by clicking the XM logo on the top of the gadget, then just re-enter your password to login. This might be an issue witht he sidebar itself since the gadget is relying on the program to store all the variables, maybe some of the data is getting corrupted on restart. We’ll look into it.

  27. Chuck in Roswell (GA) Says:
    May 30th, 2008 at 5:42 pm

    I, too, am having the problem where the application says “Click here to start”, but when I do nothing happens. I tried the logout/login solution described above, but this did not work. Only after I “reset everything” can I login and get the player to play.

    I’ve been using the player for several months on Vista…having no problems there. So I was glad to see the XP version come out. Just hoping you’ll get the kinks worked out soon.

  28. Chris in Dayton Says:
    June 6th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    I have the same problem with reboots as people above do. However it started working for me after I simply did a Re-Build Channel List. I didn’t have to re-enter login info or anything.

    Other than that, great gadget! Thanks.

  29. The Staff Says:
    June 6th, 2008 at 2:29 pm

    Chris, very interesting, we’ll be sure to pass that info along until the problem can be fixed. Thanks! :)

  30. Kenzo Says:
    June 13th, 2008 at 8:33 am

    I have the same problem / solution as “Chris in Dayton”…

    Problem:
    I see “Click here to start”
    I pick a channel, the list slides back and it still says “Click here to start.”

    Workaround:
    Re-Build Channel List

    Love the gadget – thanks!

  31. Kevin Says:
    June 18th, 2008 at 2:46 pm

    Also having the same click to start issue as the others…Thanks.

  32. Michelle Says:
    June 27th, 2008 at 10:04 am

    Having the same problem w/ the both the google and vista XM apps. I thought I had gotten around it by resetting everything at every login, but that doesn’t seen to be helping anymore. Solutions?

  33. Michael C. Says:
    July 1st, 2008 at 8:21 pm

    Yeah, I’m having the “click here to start” problem. It’s not all that heartbreaking, more of an inconvenience. I’m working off of a laptop so naturally I’m shutting down when I’m done using it. Would be nice to just “click and go!” Thanks =)

  34. Frank White Says:
    August 22nd, 2008 at 3:10 pm

    WTF!?!?!?!?! does anybody know why it does this?

  35. The Staff Says:
    August 22nd, 2008 at 5:48 pm

    We’re thinking that it has something to do with the re-login functionality in the gadget and we’re going to be looking into this as soon as we clear up some issues with the vista version.

  36. Patrick Says:
    August 23rd, 2008 at 6:05 pm

    I have tried all the fixes i have read, but have been unable to get the XM gadget for vista sidebar to work. When i click on Login and type in my username and password and click login – nothing happens. Can someone help me?

  37. The Staff Says:
    August 24th, 2008 at 2:20 am

    Patrick, restart the sidebar application itself. It should work after that.

  38. Patrick Says:
    August 24th, 2008 at 3:36 am

    I have tried that as well – but did it again just to see. Still nothing. I type in my xm logon and password and click login and i dont get any response of any sort.

  39. The Staff Says:
    August 25th, 2008 at 5:22 pm

    Patrick, that is odd. It sounds like there is something preventing the gadget from getting out to the internet. Try disabling / enabling User Account Control, Anti-Virus, Firewall, Windows Defender. Let us know if anything from there helps. Thanks.

  40. Jared Says:
    September 16th, 2008 at 10:52 am

    I’m having the Click here to start problem as well, but I haven’t found anything that will help make it work. I have tried all of the suggestions but none of them seem to respond.

    If it helps, I’m using desktop 5.8.0809.08522-en-pb

  41. Gary Says:
    September 17th, 2008 at 8:30 am

    I’m having the same issue as Patrick and Jared. I log in, click on Click to Start, but there are no stations listed under Channels (or, obviously, Favorites).

    Tried reinstalling… rebooting… turning off AntiVirus and firewall.

    Using Google Desktop 5.8.0809.08522-en-pb.

  42. The Staff Says:
    September 17th, 2008 at 10:14 am

    The newest version of the desktop software rolled out a bunch of new gadget API features. Try logging out / back in or resetting the gadget wholesale. Hopefully this is just a case of some missing data, but if the problem persists, we’ll take a look at it and see if we can get it fixed.

  43. DavidO Says:
    September 17th, 2008 at 9:23 pm

    I installed the XM gadget at the same time on my desktop (XP, Google Desktop 5.7) and my laptop (XP, Google Desktop 5.8). On 5.7 it works great and on 5.8 I can click to start and login, get the list of stations and then cannot select a station. Hope this helps the developers.

  44. Jared Says:
    September 18th, 2008 at 8:58 am

    I’ve tried everything you’ve suggested to no avail. It feels like this may be a 5.8 problem. Thanks for looking into this. I would be happy to beta this if you’d like.

  45. Craig Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 2:58 pm

    I had the old XM (v1.0) and when I tried to upgrade to 1.3, it didn’t work. Even worse, there is no xm gadget in my sidebar, but when I try to reinstall it, it gives me an error message “Failed to copy gadget – ((XM Online Radio)) – Please check a gadget with a same name is already installed and remove the old gadget before proceeding.” Is XM still installed somewhere that I can’t get to? Has anyone else had this happen to them?

  46. ClanDaith Says:
    September 29th, 2008 at 9:48 am

    Craig,

    I’m having the same problem. I can’t update the gadget.

  47. The Staff Says:
    September 29th, 2008 at 9:54 am

    You guys don’t happen to be using Vista Sidebar are you? We’ve seen this problem happen under Vista sidebar when gadgets are updated without closing them first. Google Sidebar will close the gadget before replacing it.

    If you happen to have vista, don’t worry about the Google Gadgets update.

  48. ClanDaith Says:
    September 29th, 2008 at 10:25 am

    I’m using the Google Gadgets. Also, I found the file to delete under ../My Documents/My Google Gadgets.

    Once I deleted the XM radio file there, I was able to reinstall the XM Radio gadget.

  49. Jim Says:
    September 29th, 2008 at 11:58 am

    I am having the same update issue about “gadget is already isntalled….” on all 3 of my windows XP machines…. i have tried everything how do i get the XM gadget back?

  50. The Staff Says:
    September 29th, 2008 at 5:12 pm

    Jim, try deleting the file in the My Documents -> My Google Gadgets folder. Should allow for reinstallation.

  51. ClanDaith Says:
    September 30th, 2008 at 4:36 pm

    Seems that XM Radio changed the station listing today. For example, Ngoma used to be on channel 104, but is now on 98 according to the online player on their site.

    When will the channel listed in the plug in get updated?

    Thanks.

  52. The Staff Says:
    October 1st, 2008 at 12:47 am

    ClanDaith, already done, just re-add the gadget to the sidebar or rebuild the channel list from the XM logo menu.

  53. Faye Says:
    October 16th, 2008 at 8:09 am

    OK, have had the XM acct, but log on doesn’t seem to work. WHAT NEXT???????

  54. Frank White Says:
    December 22nd, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    This gadget doesn’t work very well at all. I can finally get the thing to play but I have to log-in every time after I’ve rebooted. There should be a feature to cache the credentials like in a browser. Then the gadget itself doesn’t re-size correctly. If I try to drag to increase window size it starts dragging my calendar down. I can see what’s playing but I can’t see any of the controls like volume or play. (I know I can expand the gadget to access these controls.) Again, it should be able to do this within the window.

  55. Ryan Says:
    January 6th, 2009 at 6:36 am

    I am able to login and view channels, select and play but there is no sound. It is not muted, the volume is turned up and I can hear all other audio from my computer. I tried reinstalling and rebooting, any suggestions?

  56. The Staff Says:
    January 6th, 2009 at 11:17 am

    Ryan, this is one of the odder problems that crops up on the gadget. Try re-installing, restarting the Google Desktop, and check your firewall and Windows Defender. You may have to do some disabling , re-enabling to see what the culprit is as it sounds like the signal from XM isn’t making it to the player in the gadget.

  57. Kevin Says:
    January 15th, 2009 at 4:28 pm

    Yesterday XM re-added Backspin as Channel 65. When will this be avialble on the player? Thanks.

    The player is amazing…keep up the good work.

  58. The Staff Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 11:23 am

    Kevin, we just updated the channel lineup, though backspin wasn’t listed on the XM online page. Not sure if this channel has been added back in online yet. If we see it, we’ll update the channels again. Thanks.

  59. Brian Says:
    January 23rd, 2009 at 9:39 am

    Hi, add me to the list of people who have to either re-login or shutdown and re-add the gadget to my Google sidebar to get it to play once I reboot. I have the Vista version on another computer and have had zero problems with it there. This is frustrating for sure, but I really appreciate having this gadget on my XP machine! BTW, did anyone see the Engadget report the other day that Sirius/XM is going to start charging a monthly fee for online access in March? Fun!

  60. Charlie Says:
    January 25th, 2009 at 8:58 am

    After updating to Ver 1.8 of XM Radio gadget for Vista sidebar, two things have happened. Either the channel list is unclickable or if it is clickable, the “play” arrow is grayed out. I’ve deleted .xml, unintalled/reinstalled/rebooted several times. Other audio works fine, both online/streaming and resident on the PC, i.e. itunes.

  61. Charlie Says:
    January 25th, 2009 at 10:11 am

    Sorry, I failed to mention that I also performed a system restore back to Ver 1.3, properly removed it from the sidebar, and then downloaded 1.8. At first, I got the unclickable channel list, but then an hour later I was able to click on a channel, but the play arrow immediately grayed out.

  62. Jake Blues Says:
    January 25th, 2009 at 4:17 pm

    Backspin, Strobe are online (I checked XMs site and player) AND The Bridge (which they had online at Channel 39 for some reason) is now at Channel 27 (where it is on radios)…so can we get a new channel list please? Thanks!!

  63. The Staff Says:
    January 26th, 2009 at 5:48 pm

    Jake, list is updated, channels are on there now.

  64. The Staff Says:
    January 26th, 2009 at 5:50 pm

    Charlie, try restarting the sidebar application itself.

  65. Charlie Says:
    January 29th, 2009 at 6:33 am

    Staff: I cannot explain this, but the application worked well about an hour after my last posting on Jan 25. However now it is totally frozen again, i.e. clicking Start displays a channel list but when clicking a channel, nothing happens, all buttons on the gadget remain gray.
    I did close the sidebar, and re-opened it again from the little icon in the system tray (notification area) and nothing changed.
    Note that I have performed fresh installations of the gadget repeatedly.

  66. The Staff Says:
    January 29th, 2009 at 12:47 pm

    Charlie, when you close and re-open the sidebar, use “Exit” instead of close, then hit start and search for “Windows Sidebar.” Closing and opening the sidebar from the icon only hides and unhides it. We’re still looking into why stuff like this happens, we’ve had a lot of theories about thwy it would freeze (security, coding, etc.), but so far nothing has been immediately replicatable except in some people’s machines seemingly at random. Go ahead and try exiting the sidebar and bring it back up, let us know if that dosn’t work.

  67. Charlie Says:
    January 29th, 2009 at 10:43 pm

    Staff: OK, here is what I did. I closed the sidebar by right clicking on it which reduces it to a small icon to the system tray/task bar. Then I right clicked on that icon and clicked exit. Then I went to Start-Programs-Windows Sidebar and restarted it. Same end result, i.e. a frozen channel list. In the channel list it does display the current song playing on each channel though, so I believe XM is “transmitting” and not off line.
    This gadget worked for several months as version 1.x where x = 3 or perhaps < 3.

  68. Sean Says:
    July 27th, 2009 at 7:26 am

    Feature request
    1. Add favorites by typing in the channel number (I still get the issue where I need to reset all after a reboot, so that would be nice instead of searching the list & adding them) 2. Quick access to favorites on the main gadget screen, maybe 5 small icons at the bottom or something so you dont have to click the favorites button and wait for the fly-out menu.

  69. Tyler M. Says:
    February 8th, 2010 at 6:40 pm

    Hi, I just downloaded the XM Gadget two days ago. Received the free trial and it was working for the most part.

    When I went to log-on today and try to play some music. I couldn’t click on anything. So I restarted everything I could think of and still nothing works.

    Please help. I love this gadget and the makers of it. I don’t want it to go to waste.

  70. The Staff Says:
    February 8th, 2010 at 7:16 pm

    Tyler, not sure what’s causing the gadget to lockup like that. Have you tried right-clicking the gadget and resetting everything? This isn’t a problem that has been commonly associated with this gadget. Are other gadgets on the sidebar working properly?

  71. Tyler M. Says:
    February 9th, 2010 at 3:25 am

    I’m not sure what the problem was, but i did what you tried. I was using the Weatherbug gadget as well as the slideshow and notes gadgets.

    I closed Weatherbug and brought it back up and then XM started working again.

    Maybe there’s a connection issue between the two gadgets?

    Either way, thank you for your advice.

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