Apparently Internet Explorer is REALLY smart. It knows that .Gadget files are REALLY .zip files. And since by default the Apache web server doesn’t know what kind of MIME headers to send for a .Gadget file, it doesn’t send any and IE has to figure it out. (More than likely IIS takes care of this automagically, so this fix is for all Apache based sites)
This generally results in a customer downloading a .zip file that they have no idea what to do with.
And apparently there isn’t much if any documentation on how to get around this problem. It is easy.
Create an .htaccess file, put it in the root of your website folder, and add the following line of text:
AddType application/x-windows-gadget Gadget
That’s it.
Enjoy.