EDIT 08/02/2022Seeing 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 05/12/2020Changed the process for collecting data \ crash dumps in the instructions below.
EDIT 12/23/2021Thanks 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 12/21/2021If 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 11/01/2021Any 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 10/25/2021We 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:
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 DrohanStardock Support Manager
I have a the same problem with the software, I keep getting the following error and am unable to resolve the issue.I uninstalled the software and reinstalled and still have the problem
Hello,Sorry to hear you are having issues. Please review the first post of this thread. Do the suggested steps and report back after that all done.
ThanksBasj,Stardock Community Assistant.
Unfortunately all the steps you suggested did not help
I refuse to use Windowsblinds or Fences until I know for sure the issue is resolved. The error looping makes windows unworkable and I can't have that. It's a shame that this issue has not been resolved after 6 months. Especially since the software was not free.
Just got this problem after about 1 week of using the app on a new Win11 machine. Not using any of the monitor or other software known to cause this problem. Can't generate a crash log because I can't open the app.
Have the issue too, since I just upgraded to Win11 Pro last month. Windows explorer keeps resetting while showing this message, and only option is to shutdown/restart, then same issue recurs. Only option was to restore my backup image of a previous date. Worked for a week, and it happened again yesterday. After restoring again my image backup, and reading suggestions, I was able to disable Fences. After Windows finishes starting up, I re-enabled Fences again and it seems to be fine, at least for the moment. Just sharing the observation. Could it be some conflict at startup only?
Update: Tried disabling Fences before shutting down so it doesn't start when I boot into Win11. Issue still happens at startup. Turns out while 'Explorer resets' continuously an undetermined number of times, I can still run a 'Task' from Task Manager. Tried running my browser (Brave) and after a short while the 'resetting' sort of stopped. I haven't tried running other tasks yet to test.
If you are using Windows 11 you must not use WindowBlinds 10 or explorer will crash every time you open a new explorer window. WindowBlinds 10 is not compatible with Windows 11.
That wouldn't be the fault of Fences though but repeated crashes would make it disable itself and warn the user.
I've just got this for the first time too, Fences 3 on W10. Nothing's changed recently to my knowledge, personal PC, turned it off for two days whilst away (unusually), came home, switched it on, bang. Purge and reinstall achieved nothing. Top of the thread now to see what else is recommended...
I cant restate enough that the message is not that Fences crashed but that Windows Explorer has and Fences (that run in the Windows Explorer process) shut down as a result.
What would be prudent is to uninstall Fences and look in Event Viewer to see if WinExp is still crashing as its not always obvious that it is.
Sean DrohanStardock Product Lifecycle Manager
where in Event Viewer would I see if WinExp is crashing?
I followed all the guidance at the top of this thread, unin / reinstalled and all was fine for a day. But rebooted this morning for other reasons and back to square one. I notice that the event viewer shows a whole bunch of these, starting from when I first saw the issue three days ago:
Faulting application name: Explorer.EXE, version: 10.0.19041.1586, time stamp: 0xc1380384
Faulting module name: DesktopDock64.dll, version: 3.1.3.3, time stamp: 0x61081edf
Exception code: 0xc0000409
Fault offset: 0x0000000000024434
Faulting process ID: 0x34b8
Faulting application start time: 0x01d84b6117f13a29
Faulting application path: C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE
Faulting module path: c:\program files (x86)\stardock\fences\DesktopDock64.dll
Report ID: e2615fff-0d1f-4603-ad7f-46ec08040363
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:
There are no other errors reported in this period, just a load of this.
I installed the "FencesAllCrashesNew.zip" (https://forums.stardock.com/486084/fences-support-faq#reinstalling)
into my registry in order to create a log to try to identify the problem when it crashes.
Here's the latest entry in the logs from my latest crash loops:
- 4/10/2022 8:13:41 PM
001404F0X - UI-Language: en-US
0014050FX - FencesUI Start - /fixpermissions
001405BBX - FencesUI End - /fixpermissions
001406C5X - FencesUI End - /startingup /verifyintegrety
001406F4X - UI-Language: en-US
00144506X - UI-Language: en-US
001446FAX - UI-Language: en-US
0015F4AAX - UI-Language: en-US
0015F4BAX - FencesUI Start - /verifyintegrety
- Fences Version: 4.0.0.3
- 4/10/2022 8:15:49 PM
0015F518X - UI-Language: en-US
0015F518X - FencesUI Start - /fixpermissions
0015F546X - FencesUI End - /fixpermissions
0015F70CX - FencesUI End - /verifyintegrety
0015F71BX - UI-Language: en-US
0017C989X - UI-Language: en-US
0018B3DAX - UI-Language: en-US
0018B3E9X - FencesUI Start - /pulse
0018B418X - FencesUI End - /pulse
00003E70X - UI-Language: en-US
00003E8FX - FencesUI Start - /startingup /verifyintegrety
- 4/10/2022 8:30:31 PM
00003F1CX - UI-Language: en-US
00003F2BX - FencesUI Start - /fixpermissions
00003F6AX - FencesUI End - /fixpermissions
00004565X - FencesUI End - /startingup /verifyintegrety
00004611X - UI-Language: en-US
0000472AX - UI-Language: en-US
0000473AX - FencesUI Start - /startingup /verifyintegrety
- 4/10/2022 8:30:33 PM
000047C7X - UI-Language: en-US
000047D6X - FencesUI Start - /fixpermissions
00004824X - FencesUI End - /fixpermissions
00004D35X - FencesUI End - /startingup /verifyintegrety
00004D54X - UI-Language: en-US
00005B10X - UI-Language: en-US
00005B20X - FencesUI Start - /verifyintegrety
- 4/10/2022 8:30:38 PM
00005B8DX - UI-Language: en-US
00005B9DX - FencesUI Start - /fixpermissions
00005BDBX - FencesUI End - /fixpermissions
00005D81X - FencesUI End - /verifyintegrety
00005DA0X - UI-Language: en-US
000061B7X - UI-Language: en-US
000061D6X - UI-Language: en-US
000061E6X - FencesUI Start - /verifyintegrety
- 4/10/2022 8:30:40 PM
00006244X - UI-Language: en-US
00006253X - FencesUI Start - /fixpermissions
00006292X - FencesUI End - /fixpermissions
00006793X - FencesUI End - /verifyintegrety
000067B2X - UI-Language: en-US
00006CD3X - UI-Language: en-US
00006CE3X - FencesUI Start - /verifyintegrety
- 4/10/2022 8:30:43 PM
00006D60X - UI-Language: en-US
00006D6FX - FencesUI Start - /fixpermissions
00006DAEX - FencesUI End - /fixpermissions
00006F54X - FencesUI End - /verifyintegrety
00006F73X - UI-Language: en-US
I have. No more crashes.It may be that it's explorer crashing - but it looks very much like some call from DesktopDock64.dll is what's causing it to crash
Also a little side note... I found that any animated Stardock Deskscape 11 skins caused my CPU useage to jump to 100%, and dropped down dramatically when pausing the animation.
After a clean install of Windows 11 Pro, I installed the latest version of Fences 4. I began having this issue one day after said clean install. It took me a day or so to relate the crashes to Fences, and the error was the Windows Explorer one. I uninstalled Fences, purges with the provided app, and restarted. I reinstalled Fences, and again it ran for a day with no issues, then reverted back to the random crashing. I uninstalled and purged again, and as of yet have not reinstalled. I really enjoy using Fences, and hope that you are able to fix this issue soon. I am running an AMD Ryzen 7 3700x on an MSI x370 motherboard, 32GB of RAM, and an MSI RX 580 discrete video card. All software and drivers are current. I have changed my Windows settings to not allow Windows update to update drivers, yet it still happens.
I started got this issue too since today... noway to fix it, If I remove all settings in registry and in appdatas, will start again working properly until some hours, it will crash again with windows explorer.It's sad because I paid an extra for 4 version and 3 version still stay more stable than version 4...
Judging by how slow responses are now from the devs I think they have given up.
Fence was a good software before the last update. they are some build of v.4 that don't have theses crash but I don't know where we can download it.
Anyway it's particularly shocking considering they sold this v.4 we pay for that. v.3 was still working and v.4 won't have a lot of new innovative features (comparing of v2 vs v3 that added portal). The current issue we have is a blocker critical issue. They should fix it. This is not an update on legacy software anymore since they decided to sold the update.... it's okay, according the fact that they give the support that it deserve.
I will hope they will fix it, I'm sure they won't want to refund anyone of us.
Please be human and don't let our software die. Fence is still according me, the most useful software you made.
Here it is April 18 and still no solution to this debacle? After months? I just bought and installed this garbage and having the same months old problem. I want my money back.
For me it's the fact that coms from the devs have slowly decreased and any indication that they are even working on it is reduced.
I'm no longer experiencing the issue, but I feel like it could come back at any time.
id say the Devs have no idea how to fix otherwise this would have been fixed 12 months ago, I would say this is a problem with Fences not Windows as its been happening for too long, very sad such a great product let down by poor problem solving from the Dev end, i would imagine for a programmer this would be easy to reproduce, I can run fine for a week then this crap starts again and I have a screen full of icons because every time i re enable fences it keeps crashing over and over. Im almost at the point where I will ditch this product for good
last straw for me after again spending hours trying to troubleshoot this, even if its not a fences problem the dev needs to find a solution if they want a working product for customers, im done uninstalled now and moved on
I experienced this problem during the summer of 2021, on two different laptops. Reloading OS images of versions running V3 of Fences fixed the problem for me. No problems since, and I run both PCs daily. This makes me wonder if the right workaround wouldn't be to make V3 of Fences available for free download by bona fide owners of V4 suffering from the Explorer/Fences problem. I also think my experience seems to point at some of the changes in V4 as the triggers for this obviously hard to pinpoint problem. Best luck with your efforts.
_JanChristian
I had this in v3 as well unfortunately
Brand new windows installation. Bought fences 4 (on another laptop I used fences 2 daily). After installation, it worked for 6 hours (with reboots) and now out of the blue, it crashes the whole time...
Faulting application name: explorer.exe, version: 10.0.19041.1645, time stamp: 0x7c06cc0e
Faulting module name: DesktopDock64.dll, version: 4.0.0.3, time stamp: 0x61af975e
Fault offset: 0x0000000000026c61
Faulting process id: 0x2794
Faulting application start time: 0x01d855c86edb9c96
Faulting application path: C:\Windows\explorer.exe
Report Id: aa0d5ca4-c387-4a31-9585-85498f3a23b5
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