Is there a windows sidebar gadget that can display the CPU/RAM/HDD and network status given the ip address and possible a username/password for a given remote Windows 2008 server?
"As of Q4 of 2011, Microsoft Retired the Windows Live Widget Gallery stating: "In order to focus support on the much richer set of opportunities available for the newest version of Windows, Microsoft is no longer supporting development or uploading of new Gadgets"
My suggestion would be look at installing a proper monitoring service such as Nagios (and then use NSClient on the windows servers you want to monitor) - you can then monitor these from a browser, and would then be able to use another widget/gadget service to show the page on your desktop.
"As of Q4 of 2011, Microsoft Retired the Windows Live Widget Gallery stating: "In order to focus support on the much richer set of opportunities available for the newest version of Windows, Microsoft is no longer supporting development or uploading of new Gadgets"
Taken from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Desktop_Gadgets
My suggestion would be look at installing a proper monitoring service such as Nagios (and then use NSClient on the windows servers you want to monitor) - you can then monitor these from a browser, and would then be able to use another widget/gadget service to show the page on your desktop.