sdRohan sdRohan

Error: 'Fences has detected that Explorer was not closed properly'

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Error: 'Fences has detected that Explorer was not closed properly'

from Stardock Forums

EDIT 08/02/2022
Seeing that all known crash issues have been addressed within Fences 4, we are closing this thread.  If you are still using Fences 3 and experiencing crashes, please install the trial for Fences 4 to see if you still see them:

https://www.stardock.com/products/fences/download-trial

Should your issues be resolved, there is a substantial discount to upgrade to Fences 4:

https://www.stardock.com/products/fences/download

EDIT 05/19/2022

We think we might have a fix for one crash that is possible with Fences and folder portals.  Please see if the just-released beta does indeed resolve it for you and report back here either way, please.

https://forums.stardock.com/512519/fences-4059-beta-feedback-thead

Special thanks to k3nny5 for working with us in Teams to help resolve it.

EDIT 05/12/2020
Changed the process for collecting data \ crash dumps in the instructions below.

EDIT 12/23/2021
Thanks to help from user altae here, we have confirmed that if DisplayFusion is running, this can cause the issue.  If you have DisplayFusion installed, or other 3rd party multimonitor software (Actual Multiple Monitors, UltraMon, etc), please try uninstalling and a reboot. 

EDIT 12/21/2021
If you are seeing this issue on Windows 11, and have WindowBlinds installed as well, it will very likely crash.  Please uninstall WindowBlinds to see if you still have the issue.

EDIT 11/01/2021
Any post that does not directly contribute to finding the cause will likely be removed.  Also, to find said cause, the data asked for above is crucial.  If it is absent, the post will likely be removed. 

EDIT 10/25/2021
We are seeing that many PC \ OS related issues are clouding the data \ feedback received on this issue.

Prior to doing any of the below, we ask that you have 1st don't the following.

If nothing is resolved from it, please proceed with the below.

For some, when enabling Fences, they are seeing:

'Fences has detected that Explorer was not closed properly'

Specifically for them, we need more data to find the cause. 

Manually Collecting Crash Dump

We are now asking for the manual collection of crash dumps.  instructions on how to do this has been posted here:

https://forums.stardock.com/486084/fences-support-faq#CrashDumps

To help see if Fences is the cause of any crash, Fences has the capability to capture more data when there are crashes.  To enable it, the Fences registry needs to be changed.  One can do so by downloading and running this registry edit file:

https://cdn.stardock.us/support/uploads/FencesAllCrashesNew.zip

We are continuing to look into the crashing reports but we believe the number of users impacted is small at this time. That said, we take this very seriously and want to try and triage specific cases to see if there is a common denominator. 

MS Teams Collaboration

As one would suspect, this cant be done in the forums for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is we need data (startups, running services, sysinfo, etc).  To best accomplish this, we are going to set up a Microsoft Teams 'Team' \ Channel and invite clients having this issue to it.  The requirements for participation would be:

  • English speaking and preferably in the Western Hemisphere (for real-time chat)
  • Able to reproduce crashes at will with the latest version of Fences 4 (not Fences 3)
  • Are ok to submit data (startups, running services, sysinfo, etc) upon request
  • Are willing to stick with the troubleshooting process for (potentially) weeks.

If you can meet these requirements, please post as much here and I will send out invitations and instructions to you directly.

We thank you very much for your feedback and patience.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

fences
660,730 views 284 replies
Reply #101 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting KosKot, reply 100

Prior to doing any of the below, we ask that you have 1st don't the following. 

Done a purge and reinstall of Fences
https://forums.stardock.com/486084/fences-support-faq#reinstalling
Performed an SFC \ Restore health scan:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/use-the-system-file-checker-tool-to-repair-missing-or-corrupted-system-files-79aa86cb-ca52-166a-92a3-966e85d4094e

Thanks for the feedback and the effort.

If you do this, the clean boot, can you still get it to repeatedly happen (the crash) under that new admin account>

https://forums.stardock.com/486084/fences-support-faq#cleanboot

Please let us know and thanks again for the help.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

Reply #102 from Stardock Forums Top

I have created new Administrator account. Then I have logged to it - Fences works. Logging back to my account - Fences does not work.

Restarting PC. Logging to the new account - Fences works. Logging to my account - Fences does not work.

Fences - Organize your desktop icons today!
Reply #103 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting KosKot, reply 102

I have created new Administrator account. Then I have logged to it - Fences works. Logging back to my account - Fences does not work.

Restarting PC. Logging to the new account - Fences works. Logging to my account - Fences does not work.

Ok, I will assume that the rest of what was noted in the cleanboot, to disable all but essential Windows services and Fences itself, was also followed?

If so, that reads what we suspect, that some setting or 3rd party apps are causing the issue.  Determining what that that might be is trial and error - not fun but essential to find out what is causing it. 

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

Reply #104 from Stardock Forums Top

I have uninstalled all software installed after Fences(3 programs only), cleaned the registry, reinstalled the Fences and the problem still occurs.

I hope in the next version(s) this issue to be resolved. For now I can't use Fences at all.

Reply #105 from Stardock Forums Top

For what it is worth, purchasing and installing Fences 4 works correctly for me, no errors after a few days of use. See my previous post for information (logs etc) regarding my Fences 3 errors. 

Reply #106 from Stardock Forums Top

I'm starting to have this issue as well.

On restart, Fences wouldn't load.  I only have one Folder Portal to my Downloads folder.  Renaming the key in regedit that holds the Folder Portal to disable it helped to load Fences again.

Upon trying to remake another Folder Portal to the Downloads folder failed and restarted Fences.  There is a ViewStates folder in regedit that houses the Folder Portal config - would any of those key/value be causing the failure?

I have the restore folders on reboot on, and one of the explorer windows was the Downloads folder as well.

 

OS Name    Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Version    10.0.19044 Build 19044

The only display-related installations would be from the graphic card drivers and the DisplayLink Driver.  I do have Multiplicity but it is only KM mode.

The restart prior to this was fine - it did show that there were some programs being held up, but it resolved itself not too long after (didn't need to click restart anyway).

 

I am on the West coast as well - if Teams is needed DM me as it have it on a different email.

Reply #107 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting k3nny5, reply 106

The restart prior to this was fine - it did show that there were some programs being held up, but it resolved itself not too long after (didn't need to click restart anyway). 

I am on the West coast as well - if Teams is needed DM me as it have it on a different email.

Prior to this we need to know if a purge and cleanboot resolves the issue:

Purge:
https://forums.stardock.com/486084/fences-support-faq#reinstalling

Cleanboot:
https://forums.stardock.com/486084/fences-support-faq#cleanboot

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

 

Reply #108 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting sdRohan, reply 107


Quoting k3nny5,
reply 106

The restart prior to this was fine - it did show that there were some programs being held up, but it resolved itself not too long after (didn't need to click restart anyway). 

I am on the West coast as well - if Teams is needed DM me as it have it on a different email.



Prior to this we need to know if a purge and cleanboot resolves the issue:

Purge:
https://forums.stardock.com/486084/fences-support-faq#reinstalling

Cleanboot:
https://forums.stardock.com/486084/fences-support-faq#cleanboot

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

 

 

I had performed the purge at least twice before my initial post.  It works for a bit (though I also don't frequently turn off/restart my computer either).

Cleanboot - while I did perform it, Fences 4 did still run on both my existing account (albeit after the only folder portal fence was disabled) and the new admin account.  I did try to do a simple reconstruct of the fences (minus the icons) and a folder portal fence with some restarts on the new admin account but the issue didn't persist.

 

The OS was freshly installed less than 2 months ago as well as I had upgraded my motherboard, cpu, and the nvme drives at the same time.

Reply #109 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting k3nny5, reply 108

Cleanboot - while I did perform it, Fences 4 did still run on both my existing account (albeit after the only folder portal fence was disabled) and the new admin account.  I did try to do a simple reconstruct of the fences (minus the icons) and a folder portal fence with some restarts on the new admin account but the issue didn't persist.

Ok, so you are saying that under the new Admin account, you did not see the issue at all, yes?

If so, it would be finding out what creates the condition for it to fail.  Again, not an easy task but the only way to proceed. 

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

Reply #110 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting sdRohan, reply 109

Ok, so you are saying that under the new Admin account, you did not see the issue at all, yes?

If so, it would be finding out what creates the condition for it to fail.  Again, not an easy task but the only way to proceed. 

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

 

Yes the issue has yet to appear on the new admin account.

Reply #111 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting k3nny5, reply 110


Quoting sdRohan,
reply 109

Ok, so you are saying that under the new Admin account, you did not see the issue at all, yes?

If so, it would be finding out what creates the condition for it to fail.  Again, not an easy task but the only way to proceed. 

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

Yes the issue has yet to appear on the new admin account.

This is great and bad news.  Great that its working as intended; bad that some trial and error is going to have to be done to see what the offending app \ setting is.

We very much anticipate what you find is the cause.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

Reply #112 from Stardock Forums Top

I wish I'd seen this thread before purchasing an upgrade to V4.  I have DisplayFusion installed but an older version.  Have had V3 installed for ages with no issues.

When V4 installed I would get a rotating blue circle and Explorer becoming unresponsive.  But only on one sign-on.  The admin account was fine even though DisplayFusion was running in the background.  Something else perhaps?  Open Shell?

The system would then terminate and reload Explorer and go through the same on a loop.  I could only uninstall V4 by 'switching accounts' and uninstalling from there.

I then re-installed my old trusty V3.  Shock horror, that too is now exhibiting the same issue as V4.  So now having paid for an upgrade, neither versions are working for me.  How about a refund on the V4 upgrade until such time whatever is fixed on this?  I'm disappointed!

 

Reply #113 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Malice_UK, reply 112

The admin account was fine even though DisplayFusion was running in the background.  Something else perhaps?  Open Shell?

Absolutely OpenShell could be causing a conflict.  Have you tried with it uninstalled?

Quoting Malice_UK, reply 112

How about a refund on the V4 upgrade until such time whatever is fixed on this?  I'm disappointed!

While I see the train of thought, is it possible that those other apps need to be updated?  If it can be determined that they are indeed the cause, would you be open to asking them what possible solutions might be?

We will make every effort to provide workarounds when possible but it cant be at the expense of working with Windows native features or compromising core functionality. 

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

Reply #114 from Stardock Forums Top

Well, I decided to stop a few apps one by one to see if I could find the culprit (including DisplayFusion, Open Shell, PowerToys).  I could not find it.  So I uninstalled Fences (and cleared the settings because when I installed Fences it would present previous fences)  did a clean boot following the Microsoft instructions to run msconfig, disable all non-microsoft services, and then disabled all startup items in the Task Manager except for notifications.  On a clean reboot I installed Fences 4 and immediately got the same problem with the system becoming unresponsive and Explorer hanging.  I managed to get the control panel to open to attempt to uninstall and then I got the default Fences welcome screen for a fresh start,  As soon as I selected Create My Own Fences, it froze again,

I cannot get Fences to work at all on my PC, even from a clean boot.

Windows 10  10.0.19043 

AMD 3600 CPU

EVGA GTX1080TI Graphics.

Reply #115 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting sdRohan, reply 111

This is great and bad news.  Great that its working as intended; bad that some trial and error is going to have to be done to see what the offending app \ setting is.

We very much anticipate what you find is the cause.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

 

When I tried to re-enable the folder portal after doing the clean boot on my existing account, the issue persists.  I later found out that the issue only persists whenever I tried to create a folder portal pointing to that folder again.  Creating new folder portals to a different folder, including a folder within the affected folder works fine.  This folder is a local folder and not synced up to any cloud services.

No crash popup aside from Fences telling us explorer not closed properly.

I still do not know the root cause at this time, however, I was able to add back in the affected Folder Portal again after renaming a key in Groups to take that specific Folder Fence out (to get Fences working again) and a registry folder within the Stardock Fences area.

For the items in the 'Groups' folder, my Folder Portal was the last index, so I simply renamed the key to take it out of the list (and to keep it as a backup).

For the folder 'ViewStates', I simply renamed the entire folder to keep a backup of it.

Renaming the two registry item(s) above allowed me to recreate the folder portal again.

When comparing any differences in those registry values/folders...

For the key in groups folder that was created for the new folders portal, there were some small differences on the 5th and the last two 'columns' of the value (the last value I think was the unique identifier?).

Looking at the ViewStates folder, the ColInfo row (Binary data type) shows slightly different hex values in some areas, but I believe the different values are due to the column sizing for each column displayed (I use details view). All the other keys in this folder is the same.


 

Reply #116 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Malice_UK, reply 114

I cannot get Fences to work at all on my PC, even from a clean boot.

The cleanboot, on its own, may not be all that is necessary.  Please follow this:

https://forums.stardock.com/486084/fences-support-faq#cleanboot

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

Reply #117 from Stardock Forums Top

These two things to not reconcyle:

Quoting k3nny5, reply 115

I later found out that the issue only persists whenever I tried to create a folder portal pointing to that folder again.  Creating new folder portals to a different folder, including a folder within the affected folder works fine.  This folder is a local folder and not synced up to any cloud services.

Quoting k3nny5, reply 115

No crash popup aside from Fences telling us explorer not closed properly.

The latter IS a\the crash.

Quoting k3nny5, reply 115

I was able to add back in the affected Folder Portal again after renaming a key in Groups to take that specific Folder Fence out (to get Fences working again) and a registry folder within the Stardock Fences area.

How does that key read exactly when it's failing; please paste it here. If you want to post it and how you edited them to get it to work, all the better.

What language is your PC set to?

Also, is this something you would be available for, working with us directly via MS Teams?  I have laid out what we are looking for in the initial post.

https://forums.stardock.com/507474/error-fences-has-detected-that-explorer-was-not-closed-properly

Thank you for the efforts here, k3nny5.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

Reply #118 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting sdRohan, reply 117

How does that key read exactly when it's failing; please paste it here. If you want to post it and how you edited them to get it to work, all the better.

Here's a pic of what I had done to the key in the 'Groups' folder.  The only part of the data I erased is the username of my system.  To have Fences work again, I just renamed the key from '6' to '_6' (the key that contains my folder portal) thus making fences not load the folder portal.  Also noted below: '_6' was the one that failed, and '6' is the newly created and working one for now.

Here's the registry location.  The numbered keys most likely correspond to the order I created the fences in.

Here's the 'ViewStates' folder - the 'ColInfo' key with Binary Data is only partially shown as it is long.  To start fresh I simply renamed the folder itself from 'ViewStates' to 'ViewStates_old' as I only had one Folder Portal.

 

Quoting sdRohan, reply 117

What language is your PC set to?

English (US)

 

Quoting sdRohan, reply 117

Also, is this something you would be available for, working with us directly via MS Teams? I have laid out what we are looking for in the initial post.

Yes.  However as I'm working from home responses may be delayed during normal office hours.

Reply #119 from Stardock Forums Top

I will send you an invite and thanks for the feedback and help.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

Reply #120 from Stardock Forums Top

Just purchased yesterday.   Same problem after every reboot.   Purged, re-installed multiple times.   

Renaming the one (and only) "portal" fence in registry worked as you described.   

It was a directory full of RDP/Putty configs so I just dragged them onto the desktop and created a normal fence.   Rebooting seems to work fine now.

So, I haven't created another portal (yet) just eliminated the portal and gone to a normal fence for that one.

Reply #121 from Stardock Forums Top

Hi Sean,

Three things....

(1) The creation of a new user profile and install from that user account worked, but not my own - it still froze and Explorer stopped responding

(2) Trying to set up all my apps in the new user profile is a nightmare with MS Office accounts for Outlook, OneDrive etc, so trying to use the new account was impossible.

(3) I did a Windows 10 'in place' upgrade and kept my Apps and documents.  Result:  SUCCESS!!  Fences 4 installed fine and working fine alongside all those programs which may have been an issue like DisplayFusion, OpenShell and perhaps Powershell.

 

Happy days!  I was mortified my Fences had broken!

Hope that helps someone if they struggled like me!


EDIT:

Spoke too soon!  Although the program installed fine with none of the previous problems of it not installing, and although the new user profile was working fine, although I could create a manual fenc OK, as soon as I dragged desktop items into it, the freezing and whirling blue circle started with Explorer becoming unresponsive.   I am gutted!

Reply #122 from Stardock Forums Top

Hello guys,

I did a purge and reinstall, but this didn’t fix it. I also did the SFC thing and did a purge and reinstall again. Did not fix it. I also changed the registry for more data in the crash report, but I’m not getting a crash report anywhere. Fences just crashes the explorer when I start it. What can I do now?

 

Unfortunately I cannot join in any real-time chat since I’m living in germany :-)

 

 

Regards

Sebastian

Reply #123 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting mellmann, reply 122



Hello guys,

I did a purge and reinstall, but this didn’t fix it. I also did the SFC thing and did a purge and reinstall again. Did not fix it. I also changed the registry for more data in the crash report, but I’m not getting a crash report anywhere. Fences just crashes the explorer when I start it. What can I do now?

Unfortunately I cannot join in any real-time chat since I’m living in germany :)  

Regards

Sebastian

If you have any Fences folder portals on your desktop, and you remove them, reboot, does it still happen?

If so, and you then do a clean boot (under a new Windows Admin account)

https://forums.stardock.com/486084/fences-support-faq#cleanboot

Does it then still happen?

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

Reply #124 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting sdRohan, reply 123

If you have any Fences folder portals on your desktop, and you remove them, reboot, does it still happen?


If so, and you then do a clean boot (under a new Windows Admin account)

https://forums.stardock.com/486084/fences-support-faq#cleanboot

Does it then still happen?

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

What does "fences folder portals" mean? You mean the fences frame? I just install Fences and it crashes right away. No chance to create anything. Will try the new admin account thing though.

 

Regards

Sebastian

Reply #125 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting sdRohan, reply 123

If you have any Fences folder portals on your desktop, and you remove them, reboot, does it still happen?

If so, and you then do a clean boot (under a new Windows Admin account)

https://forums.stardock.com/486084/fences-support-faq#cleanboot

Does it then still happen?

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

Creating a new admin account and installing fences works fine. So how can I fix it now with my current account?

 

Regards

Sebastian