[BUG] Fences 3 disarranged my desktop icons

If Fences is disabled, whatever settings you have with Windows will be in effect.

What is there to fix?

I've placed all my desktop icons (links) per hand on the left side. Than I've used Fences 3 per default setting.

After disabling Fences 3 all icons were moved to the right screen side. I'm not using auto arrange icons.

Why Fences moves all icons to the right side after disabling it? I would expect that Fences restores all icons to the old position.

Before using Fences 3.03

Enabling Fences 3.03

After using and deactivating Fences 3.03

That's very odd and not something I have ever seen Fences do.

You can contact Support and they can take a look but that may be unique to your system.  https://esupport.stardock.com/index.php?/default_import/Tickets/Submit 

I just registered to get help with a very similar problem. I'm on the first day of my 30 day trial and things are not going well. I already had my desktop reasonably well organized and started the trial after reading that my desktop would be restored intact if I decided to uninstall Fences.

I selected the startup option for Fences to arrange all...and didn't like what I saw so looked for an undo feature...couldn't find it. Eventually, I uninstalled/rebooted and, horror, all my 150+ icons were arranged at the left side of my desktop in a complete jumble...not in the arrangement I started with and had evolved over several years. A second reboot didn't help.

Luckily for me, I have a utility called DesktopOK that saves/restores desktop arrangements...for some reason it would not work until, after several attempts, it did restore my desktop icons. OK, back to square 1.

Attempt 2. Reinstalled Fences. Immediately, my icons were sent to the left side of my desktop. Attempting to restore using DesktopOK with Fences running resulted in a momentary restoration followed by all icons back to left side juumble. So, I uninstalled rebooted for a second time and, again, DesktopOK did eventually restore my icon arrangement after 2-3 attempts.

What I wanted/expected from Fences was to initially leave my desktop untouched and allow me to set up desktop fences for selected icons and leave the rest alone. Then I could migrate stuff into fences over a time period. On my first install I did see a manual 'experienced users' option which I probably should have selected instead of the 'arrange all' option. On subsequent re-installs I'm not seeing it, just an immediate jumbling up of my icons to the left side. Any way I can get back to a 'clean install' situation?

If I can get some answers here I may try again and proceed with my 30 day trial. Otherwise....forget it.

Windows10 Pro. Developer...lots of apps.

TIA

I'm not sure what state Fences is in for you, but if it's installed, oprn the config and go to "Layout and snapping".

In the Layout section scroll to the far left and you should see a Pre-Install Snapshot.

Select that and follow the prompts.

Or, select the [Perform automatic layout] button

Hi,

Thanks for trying to help.

Regarding the 'Perform automatic layout'...that is the last thing I want. My icons are already manually laid out the way I want. I just wanted to enhance my workflow by adding the cool features of Fences to what I already have.

It is uninstalled because installing Fences now immediately jumbles up my icons making it impossible to do any work at all.  That didn't happen first time I installed it. I'm not sure what the Pre-install Snapshot actually is...could you explain?

I don't want to re-install until this is resolved because it took several attempts to restore my desktop on the previous 2 occasions and I'm concerned that I might be stuck with a set of 150 scrambled icons that could take ages to sort out.

To explain further....my icons are already nicely grouped manually to suit my workflow. Fences interested me because I thought I could retain my existing groups by creating fences and selecting/dragging my groups into them. If I could start Fences without it instantly scrambling my existing icons then I may be interested in another try

Before Fences auto-arranged your icons, it took a snapshot of where they were.  So you can always revert to the configuration you started with.

If you have just done a normal uninstall that snapshot should still be in place.  If you were more aggressive than that . . all bets are off.

For what it's worth . . your other application may conflict with Fences.  The two may never work together.  

Hello,

I'm using the latest version Fences 3.03.

Is it so difficult to solve the problem with auto arrange after disabling Fences?

The old problem is still there. Look posting 3!

The layout snapshot tool doesn't work if fences is disabled! So I have first to enabling Fences

and arrange all my icons manually before I can take a snapshot of my desktop icons.

Best regards,

Thomas

I gave up with layout snapshot, auto arrange etc and spent an hour or so manually arranging my fences and icons. Since Sept 2016 it all seems stable apart from an occasional 'escapee' from a fence Seems to take a while to start up from a Windows reboot as well...but not a big deal since I usually sleep/hibernate the desktop.

To summarise..after a few teething problems I'm happy with fences, kudos to the developers.

Hello ZubaZ,

can you redirect these problems to the developers?

Best regards,

Thomas

Hello user,

what happends with your icons on your desktop, if you disable fences?

My icons arrange themselves on the right side of my desktop.

Can you please test what happens, if you disable fences?

Can you please try this with the new beta?  3.0.4.12

Fences 3.0.4. shows the same behavior.

It seems there is a problem with "Auto arrange icons" and "Align icons to grid".

I've disabled "Auto arrange icons" by default.