Widgets don’t work

I’ve posted this before but my topic is closed so i will never get an answer. If i did something wrong please let me know.

My sidebar looks like this after making the modifications recommended. Widgets still don’t work though. Do i still have to add additional code to function.php? If so; would someone please explain what and where exactly the modifications have to be made to make a theme widget aware?

Please some help….

I did try this: http://automattic.com/code/widgets/themes/ but with no satisfying result.

</div>
<div id="sidebar">
<ul>
<?php
if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
    register_sidebar();
?>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_categories('title_li=<h2>Categories</h2>'); ?>
</ul>

<ul>
<li><h2>Archives</h2>
	<ul>
		<?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly&limit=6'); ?>
	</ul></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><h2>Meta</h2>
	<ul>
		<?php wp_register(); ?>
		<li><?php wp_loginout(); ?></li>
		<li><a href="http://wordpress.org/" title="Powered by WordPress.">WordPress</a></li>
		<?php wp_meta(); ?>
	</ul></li>
</ul>
<?php endif; ?>
</ul>
</div>

Thanks a lot for helping.