You have saved my desktop from a huge mess of icons!

The Purge worked!  Glad for the help!

Well.. that seems to have fixed the issue of the icons appearing in Fences, but sometimes when I click the desktop, the icons disappear, the "wait" icon spins in the task bar, and about 10 minutes later, the desktop is finally re-drawn with the fences in place.

Checking the Task Manager does not reveal anything suspicious, as CPU and Memory levels are well within reason.  I'm not convinced that this is a Fences issue.  AV, CCleaner, Win Updates, DISM, Chkdsk all came back clean.  Not a disk issues, since I'm running a SSD that is optimized.

Again, let me know if I can run any additional diagnostics that would help potentially identify the issue.

I am on a Corp Environment, Bitlocker enabled, working from home.

Device: Dell 5490 laptop (i7-7600U CPU @ 2.80GHz), 16GB RAM, Video: Intel HD Graphics 620

Disk: 256GB SSD: Intel NVMe SSDPEKKF256GB NV

Windows 10 Enterprise, build 19041.423

Fences version: 3.0.9.11

AV installed: Malwarebytes Free + Windows Defender

No wallpaper managers.

3 monitors:

  * Display 1 (laptop screen Dell): 1920x1080

  * Display 2 (Digital Television CLC501): 1280x720 [Connection Type: HDMI]

  * Display 3 (Digital Display HP L1950): 1280x1024 [Connection Type: VGA]

Error when system "hangs" and finally returns control:

explorer.exe - the remote procedure call failed and did not execute

(I click OK, then get):

shell:::{52205fd8-5dfb-447d-801a-d0b52f2e83e1}
the remote procedure call failed and did not execute

..and I have to start explorer.exe from the Task Manager.

Interestingly, browser and non-windows-system related apps seem to execute correctly.

sfc /scannow does not return any errors.

This appears to make my laptop a bit snappier.  I will run it this way for a while and report back my findings after a few days.

Thanks for the suggestion!

I changed the memory settings, again, according to the article supplied.  I was able to get Fences to run again, but it didn't seem to like it when I selected a previous desktop layout snapshot; so, I completely uninstalled Fences, and ran the cleaning .bat file.  Things were working just fine with no Fences ---cluttered, but working.

Now, I have re-installed the latest version of Fences, created NEW fences, and have re-booted.  Now, my fences are showing empty, with no icons after a reboot.  Clicking anywhere turns the screen white-ish, and the mouse icon spins and spins.  Task Manager shows 18% CPU, 41% memory, and 3% disk --- so there is no activity that is causing this.

Ironically, I decided to purchase the Objects desktop for the Groupy and KVM software -- which were running fine before the reboot.

Rebooting again...

You can try cleanboot steps to check which one is causing the issues.

https://forums.stardock.com/486084/fences-support-faq#cleanboot

Try that and report back.

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

Post boot: attempted to draw a Fence.. but it did not recognize that I was trying to draw a Fence.  This indicates to me that I need to re-install Fences from the installer.

Uninstalling...rebooting....re-installing..activred..

Drawing a Fence....same thing, windows spinning wait icon, white overlay screen...