Here in Australia it's the 1st of September and Fences this morning popped up a dialogue box which reads...
"As noted during download, this community preview beta of Fences was set to expire on November 1st, 2009. Please visit http://labs.stardock.com/Fences to obtain the latest version.
Thankyou for participating in the Fences beta!
(Fences will now run in reduced functionality until updated or uninstalled)"
Why does this happen on SEPTEMBER 1, and not on NOVEMBER 1? An earlier version which was to expire on August 31 was installed, but I installed the current one (which "expires on November 1") on top of it a week ago.
There is no later version at that link.
The version is "0.98.1970BETA"
The update button does nothing, Fences says it's up to date.
No joy here! Uninstalled .96, upgraded to v.98... Then found out that v.99 was just uploaded, uninstalled .98 and installed v.99 and still no luck.
This is an amazing application. Definitely one that I NEED and definitely know many other people could use! I would hate to see a little glitch like this turn many people away!
and my antivirus app, VIPRE, sees desktopdock.dll as a trojan and quarantined it.
You should go there to get a serial number for update
https://store.stardock.com/register.aspx?theme=impulse&id=ESD-SDS-W025
Updates are out for Fences to correct the issue.
The Good News: Looks like there's a new version at the Fences download page...
https://www.stardock.com/products/fences/downloads.asp
The Bad News: Tried it, but get an dialogue box titled "Stardock Impulse Setup Error"...
"This product requires at least Internet Explorer 7.0.
Setup cannot continue"
I really, really don't want to have to install IE 7 (or any other version for that matter).
Does Fences now need IE7, or is it just the installer that needs it, or is it also trying to install the Impulse thing and that needs it???
I'm starting to understand why it's called Fences.
No, Impulse needs IE7+ to display pages properly.
So I need to install IE7 so that Impulse (the installer) can run so that Fences will install?
Sigh, Fences is a great idea, but this extra baggage is IMO way too much. Sorry, if and when it becomes Firefox compatible or no longer needs IE, I'll revisit it. The version I have runs fine except the annoying dialogue box.
Thanks to all those who helped...
What's the problem with IE7? If you still have IE6 on your PC, even unused, you have security risks. IE7 will address them. Many apps (like Impulse) use the iE engine and updating might be the wise thing to do. (I use FF and chrome for all my browsing these day )
I appreciate your help, but having to install Impulse and IE7 so that I can firstly install Fences, then uninstall both, and then if I want to uninstall Fences or presumably upgrade it, I have to reinstall them both again is (to me) something straight out of a Monty Python sketch.
I made some comments in this other thread about why beta software shouldn't need all this extra fluff (security fixing or not)...
https://forums.stardock.com/362745/get;2358273
What's the problem with FireFox or Chrome or Opera or Safari ?
Impulse could (should ?) check if a recent version of any non-Microsoft browser is installed, instead of being single-minded about IE7.
Or maybeI missed the "Microsoft inside" label on Impulse ?
As for IE6 being a security breach, unless Stardock is the Red Cross of computing, it's not your problem whether people have security issues or not.
The engine to be used must be integrated into the program itself. As IE/MSHTML has a simple API and is present on every Windows machine, it is the best candidate. Using any other engine would require additional downloads and a complete rewrite of the code, as there does not yet exist a drop-in replacement for MSHTML.
Really, unless you're required to use IE6 for some reason (in which case you're probably at work and installing third-party software in the first place is likely questionable), there is no excuse to not keep up to date. Even if you don't use it, you're not doing yourself any favors security-wise by not doing so.
I agree that it's a bit of a pain to have to install IE7... in order to install Impulse... in order to install the new Fences beta. As others have mentioned here, I just uninstalled IE7 & Impulse after the Fences installation was complete. Inconvenient, but not the end of the world.
The new beta seems to work fine for me, just like the previous beta version. There is one glitch I noticed in the older beta version, though, and unfortunately it doesn't seem to have been fixed in the new beta version: I am very often unable to drag 'n drop Desktop icons at all - when I try to drag an icon, I get the circle-with-diagonal-slash mouse cursor and it won't drag. Darn - I was hoping the new version would fix that. Has anyone else experienced this problem?
One other minor glitch occured when I installed the new beta: the first few times I attempted to create a backup snapshot, it showed up as "all black" in both the small thumbnail & larger preview. Eventually, after a few reboots (necessitated by the IE7 uninstall) I was able to save a snapshot and have it render correctly. Weird.
JohnB
1. If I upgrade to the latest level, will I loose my current layout settings?
2. Where is the data for the layout settings stored?
Thanks
You can take a snapshot of your layout in the Tool section of the Fences config.
Thanks ZubazHate to sound like such a dweeb. But I'm using XP and while I'm very familiar with where application settings are normally kept, I can find the backup settings but not the main ones.Can you or anyone tell me where the data is in XP?Thanks
Ok, I'm out of here. I updated with Impulse and all my settings were lost.Fortunately I had made a full sized wallpaper screen shot of my "work of art". And I had saved my icon locations with Desktop Restore. So all I had to do was to remove the icon images from the wallpaper screen shot with Photoshop and set that as my new wallpaper. Now my screen looks just as it did before but I don't need Fences and Impulse.And for the record, the reason I quit trying to work with fences is it's need to use Impulse for updating. To me this represents a much too complicated way to maintain an application and leaves lots of room for things to go wrong now and in the future.Nice idea. I learned a lot. And now my desktop is really neat. For this I thank you and wish you well.
The whole IE7 thing is totally wrong. As a developer, I have to maintain IE6 because most of our web traffic is still IE6. Even if that weren't the case, you just don't develop for a single platform. At the very least, offer a way to disable the expiration screen or kill the program and force the upgrade - but don't waste our time. I agree that Impulse is much too heavy handed an approach for updating - Adobe seems to get by just fine without all the drama this has. I tried the above solution of installing Impulse and removing it - totally jacked up my system to the point where the only fix was to restore it pre-Impulse. It's a shame - this is a killer product - too bad they make it so difficult.
I'm in the exact same boat and totally agree with you. I need to keep IE6 for work reasons. I can upgrade, but it'll make my web development work harder if I have to keep firing up Virtual PC or something to check for IE6, which I have to do very often. I don't use IE6 for web browsing and don't give a shat about this whole security BS with IE6 and Windows. It's is irrelevant to Fences and Stardock is not my security advisor.
Stardock could just make a stand-alone Fences and no one will compain. Or make a lite paid version for stand-alone if they want money from no-Impuse users who won't use other Stardock apps. Fences is the only program I ever need from Stardock and probably will be for a long time. I'm sure many here are exactly the same. Can't they see that most of the people here that complain about Impulses and IE7 are those who use the Fences beta???
What happened when you uninstalled? Nothing about Impulse should affect the rest of the system.
We've transitioned away from using Impulse/Gamestop Downloader to download Stardock software since the sale of Impulse to GameStop.
You can access your registrations and download links for stand-alone installers by logging in with your Stardock account here: https://store.stardock.com/myaccount/products or manage your products with Stardock Central (currently in beta) at https://www.stardock.com/products/stardockcentral/
Necro Thread......Resurrection
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