With the Fences 5.85 (was 5.85) beta release today, we are creating this thread so that users can report any observed issues.
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Right-click the Product in Steam
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https://cdn.stardock.us/support/uploads/steamwebhelper_2024-02-19_17-44-35.png
Please include the following for anything found:
Exact Windows version \ build (winver.exe)
Detailed steps to recreate the issue seen
Screenshots and videos are very helpful. Videos can be uploaded to a cloud drive service (GoogleDrive, DropBox, OneDrive, YouTube), with a shared link included in your post. Images can be copied and pasted directly into a post.
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Thank you for your interest and any time you put into making Fences 5 a better product.
I'll upload a new log tonight.
In the meantime, I've discovered something else -- when Fences get messed up/distorted, the desktop right-click menu also gets changed.This is the desktop right-click menu under normal working conditions:
And when Fenches have becomes messed up, the desktop right-click menu looks like this:
So there's definitely something weird going on.
Just uploaded a new log through the built-in log uploader.
@Wild4fire, thanks for the report. Some good news! I'm noticing a very interesting oddity in this round of logs – and one that we're able to do something about.
Technicals:When your monitor goes to sleep, it's doing something very interesting in that (1) it's disappearing altogether (system reports 0 physical monitors with 1 virtual monitor @ 1024 x 768) (2) the IDs of that 1024 x 768 aren't matching up between Explorer.exe and Fences.exe.
I've implemented a workaround which should both hopefully fix your problem and not impact other users negatively.
Will post a copy tomorrow for you to test, and with any luck we'll see it is fixed!
More soon and thanks again.
Well, it's not that my monitor is going to sleep, I actually turn it off. But that's something that I also did when I still had Windows 11 23H2 installed, so I'm guessing that Windows 11 24H2 has some changes under the hood that cause this issue.
I don't think it's a driver issue. If I remember correctly, the issue didn't appear with nVidia drivers version 561.09 which I had installed back when I was on Windows 11 23H2. When I installed Windows 11 24H2 (a fresh install, not an in-place upgrade) I immediately went to version 565.90, so right now to test that I installed 561.09 on 24H2 too. Didn't solve the issue, so that makes me think it must really be something in Windows 11 24H2.
Thanks for all your efforts, I'm curious if that updated version of Fences will fix things.
Still, the question remains why Windows is behaving like this. It didn't use to do so under 23H2 so I'm assuming it's something introduced with 24H2.
Hi Wild4fire, yes, curious indeed. It seems like 24H2 is treating your monitor-off situation differently, and further, in a way that we're not seeing on other systems.
Nonetheless, I'm hoping that this build might fix it. Give this a try, while once again enabling advanced logging (AFTER installing/rebooting), and let's see if we've moved the ball forward. Fingers crossed, and in either event really would like to get this resolved for you.
New update to test is here:https://cdn.stardock.us/support/uploads/Fences5_5.8.6.1-j148-Setup.exe
Thank you!
Thanks for all your hard work, it's much appreciated!
I think we'll have an answer tomorrow morning when I wake up and check my e-mail. If I turn the display on and everything is still fine, it would then appear it has been fixed. If not, I'll make sure to gather some extra logging for you guys.
Well, it's early morning over here and I just turned on my display. Behold: all Fences are still correct! To be sure, I'll celebrate after a few more tries, but this is very hopeful!
Wooo! Fingers crossed! Will await further confirmation but that's great news so far!
If it ends up being fixed, upload a report one last time so I can scope it and verify everything looks good under the hood, beyond it just empirically working. But yup I'm hoping this one is a wrap. Thanks again for your help resolving.
Just got home and checked -- everything's still OK! If tomorrow everything is still OK I'll send in the logs so you can wrap things up on this issue.
Thanks for the excellent support getting this issue fixed. It is very much appreciated!
Everything's still OK over here, so I think it's safe to assume the issue has been fixed. As requested, I've just uploaded a report so you can wrap things up.
And, again, many thanks for the excellent support getting this issue resolved!
Verified logs look good; glad we could get it fixed for you and ty again for your help!
No, thank *you*! I'm glad you guys offer support that's actually good, it's not always like that with software companies.
It's been a few days but unfortunately, today the issue returned. I've enabled logging again and I'll try and see if I'm able to catch a few such occurances. If so, I'll upload the log and respond in this thread again.
Ok noted. Will keep an eye out for it.
It would seem it occurs much less frequently now. Also, I have observed a new behaviour -- just now, when I got home and turned my monitor on I did not notice anything, the fences were still in the correct place. However, as I opened a fence, the icons were all jumbled. Logging out and logging back into Windows did, as previously, fix the fences.
I'll continue logging until I have a few more occurances caught in the logs.
Roger. Feel free to submit right after an incident and submit a few reports 👍 No harm done by sending too many
I am curious though, am I the only one with issues like this? Surely I'm not the only one? Or is there something specific in my situation that causes these problems?
I'm glad that it occured on a fresh Windows installation so at the very least we cannot blame an old Windows install.
Yup agreed (re old vs new Windows install)
Unique, I guess sorta the proof is in the pudding ha. If it were not unique, would have seen this and address and/or firefighting elsewhere on the message boards.
I'm sure it's impacting others though, who just aren't making their way here for support. So am looking forward to getting resolved in full. 🙏
Unsure what is "still breaking" now per se, but the original "fix" involved the fact that Windows was basically telling two different processes two different things about the monitor state of the system. The in-explorer and out-of-explorer processes that manage this stuff were giving back different results for the same function call, for when your system went to zero monitors. This is an extremely common action (monitor going to sleep or turned off etc → zero monitors), so if this were a common thing, we'd be blowin up with non-working copies 😵💫. Worked around it by having the in-explorer piece pass it's knowledge to the out-of-explorer piece so that both sides would be in agreement. Glad we worked around that piece of it, but looking forward to seeing what else is still going on.
Could it perhaps have something to do with the fact that I have Windows configured to launch folder windows in a separate process?
Usually, all file explorer windows, including the desktop shell, run in a single explorer.exe process. If one file explorer window hangs or crashes, it will cause all file explorer windows running in the same process to hang or crash until the process restarts.
So, for increased stability I have Windows configured to launch folder windows in separate processes.
Perhaps that's somehow interfering?
Unfortunately, now that the problem(s) occur far less than they did before, it's difficult to test whether or not that setting is actually causing issues. I can disable it, but I think to be sure that was the cause I'd be looking at 1 to 2 weeks of testing to see if the issue occurs again.
Unlikely. That setting doesn't have any impact on the desktop itself (only new standalone explorer windows), and lots and lots of users using that as well. So I wouldn't worry about that one!
I'd say that just each time you see the problem come about, send a report right away, and I can see if something pops out. 🙏
Alright, I'll send out a log immediately when the problem pops up again. That log will have the previous two ones from the last week too. After that, I'll send two or three logs immediately after the problem occurs again.
That should give you, hopefully, enough information to track down what's happening now. The fix you sent me did at least cause the issue to pop up *a lot* less, so I'm already very glad to have it mostly resolved.
All,
The Fences beta has been updated to 5.86. For details, please see:
https://forums.stardock.com/531354/get;3946718
As always, thank you for your time, feedback, and support.
Sean DrohanStardock Product Lifecycle Manager
Howdy @Wild4fire, just seeing if the issue has been popping up any more.
No, it hasn't popped up again. So whatever caused the one or two times since your fix, it's not something that occurs regularly. For now, I'll disable logging in Fences. Should the issue rear its ugly head again I'll start logging again.
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