gadgets wont work when setting rainmeter to auto startup?

[extent]

Id been searching for ages to try and get my version of xp sp2/3 to look like vista, and only now found the VistaRainbar4602.rmskin and rainmeter! ive only tried thoosje's sidebar, stylexp and the questionable "vista sidebar.exe" before (made by a very young euro dj-detected as malware on my machine and didnt seem safe or stable either. not a joke!) but rainmeter looks like the best tool for customisation.
I still have stylexp running on my system too (there is a fix for sp3) but i use it mainly for custom boot and logon screens, and the design of my main bottom toolbar. its working fine with rainmeter on sp3. three questions i have for rainmeter :-

1 - when I have rainmeter set to run automatically at startup, some tools dont work at all. eg for internet news gadgets to show info, despite my system connecting automatically to the net on startup, I have to restart rainmeter. is there a fix, aside from waiting for my net to connect, then running it manually? are there gadgets that will eventually check if my connection is active, then run? perhaps I am just using the wrong gadgets, and need to find better ones?

2 - media player gadgets for rainmeter not being able to play anything unless I first run the main media player first and minimise it, is probably my biggest issue. I installed media players bonus pack eventually too, to be able to hide it from always showing up in the taskbar at the bottom of the screen- to make my system look fully like vista, lol :roll: Perhaps sidebar is more of a stylisation tool, and it is the best ive ever come across that works in xp- but if rainmeter is set to come on automatically at startup, are there any wmp gadgets that will work alone, without having to first run the main player?

3 - Im also wondering if its possible for rainmeter to run other net related gadgets such as internet radio, since it can do net news- if audio related net gadgets are also possible?

thanks for any info im guessing my questions may have been answered 100x times, but i would appreciate any help!

[Chewtoy]

There is a way to make everything wait for a internet connection to be made. But it involves quite the bit of modification to the skins and some midiocre knowledge in how calcs and bang works. But there's a lot to be made to skins for it to work.

Just so we're clear on the player part.
Rainmete does NOT replace the actual program. It mearly draws and sends info to it so we can control it to some extent. We still need the real player.

Internetradio has already been made. http://rainmeter.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=599&hilit=rainradio
But for just a popup or website-radio in your browser, you'll need to parse it like we do homepages, and pray that they don't use java, flash or any other evil format.

[extent]

ah, that explains alot! :insider: for media player gadgets or radio, i could always look for seperate tools that would appear and run on the desktop, to go along with rainmeter.

one thing I am wondering about though, is why (even with wmp running) only my vista themed wmp gadget plays any music at all! the media playing gadgets from the default themes dont play anything (enigma and gnemoter). some of their media player skins are identical to one another also, and ive received one error so far, which states "vlc http interface was not found"? any ideas? I do have both vlc and wmp installed on this machine

thanks

[Chewtoy]

Rainmeter don't "play" anything. They just gather the data.
WMP don't show any data, for we have not any tools to extract the info from it. We can only send commands to it.
If you look at winamp, iTunes or foobar, you'll see that we get the info in variouse ways. But WMP is a commands-only player atm.