Fences 4 Will Not Restore Backups

from Stardock Forums

I upgraded from Fences 3 to 4 a few days ago.

After restarting the PC today, all of the fences were stacked up on the primary display.  That wasn't an uncommon experience for me with Fences 3.  Restoring from a layout snapshot would fix it.

The same method is not working for me now.  I made several backups while doing a big tune up of my fences arrangement, following the v3 to v4 upgrade.  None of these will restore.  When I try, some icons in the jumble of fences on the main display flash briefly, but that's it.

I have two monitors, both 1920 x 1080.  I'm running Fences version 3.9.8.54 on Windows 11 Pro version 10.0.22000 Build 22000.

Any thoughts?  Thanks.

fences
6,454 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Hello,

I have forwarded your report to the Stardock support team for their review and recommendations.

Please keep an eye on this thread for any updates.

We really do appreciate your feedback, thanks.

Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Hello,

Sorry to hear you are having trouble.

The prior snapshots may have become corrupt and you may need to create new ones.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

Curtains - Customize Windows with additional styles
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

I appreciate the quick responses and your giving this your attention.

I make nightly backups of my %APPDATA% folders.  To explore the corrupt snapshots idea, I backed up the current snapshots from ..\AppData\Roaming\Stardock\Fences\Backups, then replaced them with yesterday's backup of the folder.  No change in behaviour. 

Then I tried replacing that folder's contents with my backup from Nov 24, the first backup which followed my major redo of my fences arrangement.  Same thing, no change in behaviour.

So now I will make a set of new dummy fences across my two monitors, create a new snapshot, try restoring that snapshot to see what happens, then will report back.  I want to make sure that the problem is no longer present before I manually recreate the lost arrangement, which included four Desktop Pages of fences and involved my first uses of Folder Portals.  That is going to be a lot of work.

Are there any obvious signs to look for in determining whether the snapshots are corrupt?  The text in all the snapshot XML files that I have scanned looks 'normal'.  Each starts with "<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><SnapshotInfo..>,  ends with </SnapshotInfo>, and everything in between, while meaning nothing to me, looks as I would expect, i.e., structured and with no strange non-ASCII characters.

Thanks again.

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

So now I will make a set of new dummy fences across my two monitors, create a new snapshot, try restoring that snapshot to see what happens, then will report back.  I want to make sure that the problem is no longer present before I manually recreate the lost arrangement, which included four Desktop Pages of fences and involved my first uses of Folder Portals.  That is going to be a lot of work.
End of quote

I suspect that will work fine, yes.

While every effort was made to make older snapshots work with Fence 4, there may indeed be some configuration you have (had) that made it so it would not restore (no error, just do nothing).  This can be tested if you install Fences 4 (reboot) and install Fecnes 3 and try restoring again.

If you find it works, we may have something to look at as to why its not working with Fences 4 (it would be prudent to try to restore again if you indeed update again).

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager