Fences and wallpaper turn black, randomly, as with almost all other version of fences, as reported numerous times by a lot of users all over the internet, in the forums on reddit etc.

Uninstalled reinstalled - same behavior.

Tried other version on different pcs - same behaviour.

Latest drivers. Happens on amd, intel, nvidia 5070, nvidia 1080, nvidia 4060.

Windows 11 pro genuine.

This can be temporarily solved by:

- enabing and disabling fences

- restarting explorer

- toggling different settings like hide scrollbars when inactive, quick hide etc. Sometimes they work, sometimes i need to toggle different other settings

-

Wake up. Please.

Thanks.

I don't have any desktop altering software.

It happens randomly. Sometimes 3 times a day, sometimes once every two days, so clean boot is not an option.

Is there any way to enable trace logging?

I'll identify the trigger and get back to you.

Do you have the power to give it priority and solve it or will a ticket be opened to the devs and it will be solved in years?

When launching any Folder or shortcut from a Fence, there is a solid 30 second delay before action takes place. 

https://www.dropbox.com/t/Nhp4dANjQFApBE7j

Hi Geech, sorry for the delay – we did escalate this on our end and upon looking into the fences_debug_info_shellext.txt file (advanced loggin) submitted, we saw only a few minutes worth recorded. Specifically, the app loads once and then proceeds normally for about 3 minutes, after which point the log was captured. Likewise, no crash dumps were captured which was also surprising. The team expected to see at least 3 app startups based on your report – one from the reboot after enabling advanced reporting, and then twice more after crashing and re-opening.

We're not entirely certain the next step as result – potentially submitting another report and seeing if it contains more.

Likewise the question came up of whether disabling Fences resolves the situation. There are two variations of this. (1) Just disabling then proceeding as normal, which technically leaves it loaded but disabled (2) Rebooting thereafter, at which point Fences didn't load at all, and is not only disabled but unloaded entirely.

Unfortunately otherwise, yes the initial report came back very normal. Wondering if you've seen any other trends towards what results in hangs vs what does not, and since it's been some time, what you've done to work around, assuming you're still using the product.

We're sorry for the frustration

Hello.  Ok thanks for doing what you can.  If I disable Fences, everything works well, both on the simple click, and with the reboot as well.  I've stopped using it for the most part, but I might look into reverting to v5 which worked fine for me.  Will my v6 key work with v5?

I've found a workaround. All of the files and shortcuts stored in my Fence groups were located in my C:\Users\username\OneDrive\Desktop. I removed my current Fences, relocated this Desktop folder to a different drive that is not synced with OneDrive, then recreated my Fences using those newly relocated files. I also turned off OneDrive sync with my Desktop. This solved the delay issue.

Now I'm beginning to think this could be a OneDrive issue, instead of Fences, however I can't be positive because other files stored in my OneDrive do not exhibit the delay if accessed outside of Fences or my Desktop. 

Umm. I have googled around for a fix but haven't seen anything.  I have Fence 6.02, on Windows 11 Home.  Appears to work fine except, I can't lock the fences. So I end up moving them around at times.  I looked through the settings and the right click drop downs and can't find 'lock fence' anywhere.  Am I missing something?

I just tried Fences 6 and it produces the same high (1 CPU core fully loaded) Explorer.exe workload for mouse movement over the empty desktop that Fences 3 did for some time now. 

Hello Basj,

thanks for the quick reply. I followed the Purge instructions and installed the latest Fences 6 trial downloaded today. Same result when moving the mouse-pointer over the (empty) desktop!

Fences enabled:

Fences disabled:

In the sandbox it doesn't happen from mouse-pointer movement over the empty desktop, but it happens from moving the mouse on and off from a fence.

The CPU never gets to 100% neither inside nor outside the sandbox. Instead it runs 1 thread/core (out of 32) up to 100% plus some extra load.

100/32 = 3.125% = 1 core fully loaded (at 100% for that one core)

Keep in mind that this load is shared between two virtual cores as Windows keeps shifting the thread back and forth.

*Inside* Sandbox, moving mouse on/off Fence area:

Curiously the WUDFHost is involved inside the Sandbox?!

*Outside* Sandbox, moving mouse over (supposedly) empty desktop: