im using the 2.13 and have the same problem , desktop is empty need to right click slide and left click to see all icons, but I see now that finally after more then a year someone is looking into it? 

anyways to fix all problems with fence , completely disable the UAC crap , and I don't mean by sliding the slider to never notify , that doesn't disable UAC like in windows 7, it needs to be completely disabled in local policies >security> and disable "User Account Control: Run all administrators in admin approval mode "

note that this will disable METRO crap apps, so if you use metro don't do this

this will fix the  fence not only icons not showing up but faster loading time , it will also fix the problem where tons of application not starting up with windows

We have a work around to set up a delay for Fences to load MRBULL0. That's why we have you contact us in support.

https://esupport.stardock.com/index.php?/Tickets/Submit 

I fixed it by disabling UAC completely, and everything is working good , I had 6 applications that was not loading on windows 8 startup and all in admin mode..

the only fix for my problems was to disable UAC completely witch actually made my windows 8 run so much smoother and faster.. I always disabled this since windows vista and never had a problem , only thing is I thought it was as simple in windows 8 with the "disable UAC" from the msconfig , but it was little more complicated..

cheers

Windows 8.1 x64 disabled uac no difference. 

I have a machine with actual 6 cores and 64GB of ram this is nuts should happen in a blink.