Fences 5.86 Beta Feedback Thread

Known issues

While we appreciate all feedback, please remember that we offer no official support for beta \ preview \ developer channel versions of Windows. If you report issues while in any of those early release channels, you should not expect them to be addressed unless it still exists in a retail version of Windows.

• tbd

***Reserved***

I recently performed a fresh install of Windows 11 after 24H2 was officially released. That coincided with the 5.84 release of Fences, but the issue I'm having has persisted with the 5.85 release of Fences.

Whenever I leave my PC for a while with my monitor turned off, no matter if I lock Windows or not, when I get back Fences are completely messed up. Icons are randomly tossed around, Fences have moved and sometimes Fences seem to have disappeared altogether and my icons are randomly on the normal desktop.

Restoring a backup does absolutely nothing, everything remains the same after I restore a backup. What *does* fix the issue, however, is simply logging off and logging back in.

This is on Windows 11 24H2 (build 26100.2033) with Fences 5.85 (problem also occured with 5.84) on a single monitor setup (3840x2160 resolution). To be perfectly clear, I did not have this issue with my previous Windows installation but that was Windows 11 23H2 and although I cannot check (obviously), I think that was a Fences version prior to 5.84.

I have to leave now, but when I get back I'm sure everything will be messed up again. I'll grab a screenshot then to show the problem.

-- EDIT: well, I'm back home and yup, it happened again. I'm attaching a screenshot to show what happened. For a fullscreen image (3840x2160 resolution), click here -- you can then also clearly see some Fences that have been moved to a random location on the desktop (and they're empty). And as I've said before, simply logging out and logging back in fixes everything.

(oh, if you're seeing that Cheats folder -- don't worry, I'm not into multiplayer at all, those are for my singleplayer stuff only; and even if I did play multiplayer games I wouldn't even dare think of cheating)

Were I the king of the world, Windows would not be allowed to 'Sleep' in the fashion they do.  It's a destructive process (to the current Windows session) on the way down and waking - something ALWAYS seems to fail - I have to restart Edge every morning or both my PCs are near unusable. 

While there are edits you can make to the sleep \ power process, instead of logging out \ in or a reboot to fix Fences, open Task Manager and 'Restart' the Windows Explorer process when, and only when, the PC is fully awake

If that does not work, but you notice that the Windows taskbar does not reload, restart it again, please.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager 

I think you're misunderstanding, I'm not putting my PC into sleep mode. I have that disabled. No sleep mode or anything like that. I just turn off my monitor and Windows remains active, after a while I come back and turn my monitor back only to then notice the issues I've described. So this is, by default, *not* an issue with sleep mode or anything like that because I don't use sleep mode.

Quoting Wild4fire, reply 6

Quoting sdrohan,

reply 5

Quoting Wild4fire,

reply 4

- EDIT: well, I'm back home and yup, it happened again. I'm attaching a screenshot to show what happened. For a fullscreen image (3840x2160 resolution), click here -- you can then also clearly see some Fences that have been moved to a random location on the desktop (and they're empty). And as I've said before, simply logging out and logging back in fixes everything.

Were I the king of the world, Windows would not be allowed to 'Sleep' in the fashion they do.  It's a destructive process (to the current Windows session) on the way down and waking - something ALWAYS seems to fail - I have to restart Edge every morning or both my PCs are near unusable. 

While there are edits you can make to the sleep \ power process, instead of logging out \ in or a reboot to fix Fences, open Task Manager and 'Restart' the Windows Explorer process when, and only when, the PC is fully awake



If that does not work, but you notice that the Windows taskbar does not reload, restart it again, please.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager 

I think you're misunderstanding, I'm not putting my PC into sleep mode. I have that disabled. No sleep mode or anything like that. I just turn off my monitor and Windows remains active, after a while I come back and turn my monitor back only to then notice the issues I've described. So this is, by default, *not* an issue with sleep mode or anything like that because I don't use sleep mode.

Understood but the ask remains the same.  If when the PC is full awake and all your monitors are on, if you restart Windows Explorer, wait a few seconds, does Fences arrange a you suspect?

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

When it happens again, I'll check.

I just woke up and checked: Fences were messed up again - I tried restarting explorer.exe and yes, that fixed things.

If you are physically turning off the monitor, try leaving the power on but setting your Windows power setting to just black it out

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

Why would I do that? That's not a solution. Also, with pre-5.84 Fences and Windows 11 23H2 this all worked just fine. So why wouldn't it now?

I am not presenting it as a 'solution', While4fire.  However, you just named 2 gigantic variables (and just the ones we know of) - not the least of which is a major update to Windows. That is why I said 'try' as I want to know if it works.

Please humor me and tell me if it works, changing the power options and not turning the power off to the monitor itself. 

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

Just blacking out the display through Windows power settings does not appear to cause the issue to appear.

Thank you for the effort. 

Since you do not sleep your PC, the power it uses does not seem to be a concern for you - you just want the monitor not to render anything when you are not using it.  Thus, what you did with the power reads like a workable solution, yes?

However, I would like to know more...

If you were to turn the monitor off, wait a few seconds, and turn it back on, is Fencs messed up even with that act?  If Fences are NOT fine, but you wait a few seconds (10 let's say), does Fences right itself?

If the Fences are fine just after you turn off \ on the monitor, how long do you have to leave it off for it to fail?  Also, if given time (again, 10 seconds or so), does Fences right itself?

How is your monitor connected - HDMI, DVI, etc?  If its connected to a video hub, and it's removed so that just the monitor is plugged into the PC, does it work?

Lastly, if you can reproduce the issue reliably (Fences does not right itself after 10 seconds or so), I would like to collect some logs from you.  This page will detail how to accomplish that

https://support.stardock.com/space/SHC/1439531023/Fences+Debug+Logging

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

I don't know (yet) how long it takes for the issue to appear, up until now I've noticed it in the morning when I go to check my e-mail and in the evening when I get back home -- in both cases obviously many hours have passed. I'll try and see if I can narrow down how much time it actually takes for the issue to appear. I can at least say having the display turned off for just 15-20 seconds does not trigger the issue.

Tomorrow morning I'll check if Fences self-corrects if I wait for a bit.

(my display is connected directly to the video card through a DisplayPort connection)

Hi Wild4fire, I think this may be one we can only get a closer look at with advanced logging, if you wouldn't mind sending us a report.

Steps are, open up the About dialog and select Enabled Advanced Logging, log out / log back in (or reboot) – then begin doing the steps to reproduce the issue. Reproduce & fix it several times over if you can, include doing things like restoring backups to attempt to fix, etc. Try to document it the best you can the steps you're taking, and include it with the error report or post it here. Once you've been able to demonstrate the problem a couple times and have futzed around with it, hit Create Error Report Package, which will guide you to uploading the report to us.

This might be a tricky one to solve, but we're more than happy to dive into the logs and see what we can find. Looking forward to finding a fix.

I have just verified that just waiting does not cause Fences to auto-correct. The Fences remain messed up until I restart explorer.exe or log out and log back in again.

I have enabled logging and when I get back home from work this evening the issue will have occured again so at least one event will have been logged. Tomorrow morning a second event will have been logged.

Just got back home, my fences were messed up again. Tried restoring a Fences backup, didn't work. However, thankfully the backup feature shows that a backup was taken at 08:10 this morning, about an hour after I turned my monitor off. That backup shows the messed up fences, so apparently the fences getting messed up occur with about an hour after turning the monitor off.

I'll keep Fences logging until I've had two more occurances of this issue.

The error report package has been uploaded (FencesIssueReport_v5.8.5.4_2024-10-17_20-38-13) to the Dropbox account.

So just noticing – any reason you're not using this (new default) setting? We're looking at fixing the issue you pointed out as well with the legacy system and are taking steps based on your log, but you might see better results with this option. Curious if using that option resolves the issue in a way that's satisfactory.

Quoting Dr, reply 20

So just noticing – any reason you're not using this (new default) setting? We're looking at fixing the issue you pointed out as well with the legacy system and are taking steps based on your log, but you might see better results with this option. Curious if using that option resolves the issue in a way that's satisfactory.

I've tried earlier to change these settings to see if that would work. The setting you pointed out was the one I had originally configured. I've just set it back to that, tonight when I get back home I'll check whether anything has changed.

Quoting Dr, reply 20

So just noticing – any reason you're not using this (new default) setting? We're looking at fixing the issue you pointed out as well with the legacy system and are taking steps based on your log, but you might see better results with this option. Curious if using that option resolves the issue in a way that's satisfactory.

We need to remove those other options as soon as possible....

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

Quoting sdrohan, reply 22

Quoting Dr W - Fences Support,

reply 20

So just noticing – any reason you're not using this (new default) setting? We're looking at fixing the issue you pointed out as well with the legacy system and are taking steps based on your log, but you might see better results with this option. Curious if using that option resolves the issue in a way that's satisfactory.

We need to remove those other options as soon as possible....

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

The per-monitor-configuration option did not make a difference. I just got home, turned my monitor back on and the fences are a mess again.

Roger that. Able to upload again the new log? Thanks again

There are no new logs, I stopped logging after three incidents. I don't want to be running logging for days.

I'll enable logging again tonight so it can catch the issue overnight and tomorrow morning and evening when I'm away for a while.