Fences freezes right-click menu after calling out using hotkey

from Stardock Forums

I assigned "Win+D" to show Fence (toggle). But every time I show Fence using the hotkey, the mouse right-click menu on the desktop is frozen, that is, when I minimize all windows and right-click the mouse on the desktop, the menu does not appear. In additional, all files on the desktop disappear (I am not talking about shortcuts in Fence -- I am talking about files downloaded or copied to desktop). I have to press the hotkey "Win+D" again to bring everything back to normal. This issue only happened after a recent update. I have tried to uninstall and reintall Fence but the issue persists.

fences
8,008 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Hello,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. Need more information on your system please.

  1. Need to know you on Windows 10 or 11? And also need its full version number. Use Winver.exe to get those number.
  2. Fences version number.

Thanks
Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant.

DeskScapes - Bring your desktop background to life.
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

Hello,
I believe that is how it is design to work. When you use the toggle mode. Its on or off. So when its on the Fences will always be in-front and you no longer have excess to your desktop hence right click don't work. To have excess to you desktop again you will need to press Win+D again (as you set it so) than everything will be back to normal. If you do not want this. You should use the Show Fences (press hold) option. So the Fences will be in-front only while you hold the "Win+D" keys.

Thanks
Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant.

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Thanks for the explanation. I understand that the toggle mode brings Fences in-front. But I don't understand why the desktop is frozen -- this does not happen to any other apps or windows. For example, I am using a web browser right now in-front, but I can still click anywhere in the desktop and show the right-click menu. I can also see all the files on the desktop -- they don't disappear. The web browser is simply active but it does block the access to other apps or files.

Another issue is that if I bring Fences in-front and click an app in the Fences window, then this is supposed to bring the app in-front and deactivate Fences from the front. But if I minimize the app to show the desktop, the right-click menu is still frozen. This does not happen to any other apps or windows, because usually when an app is selected, the app window will become active and the previous active window will be deactivated. But Fences remains active when I select an app or another window.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

Well Fences is not like any other application. Actually, Fences in the early stage (V3 and below) only work on desktop. Can't be bring in front of any application. But with Fences v4 it has that option. But, I do believe, the dev, make it so that when the bring forward is active, it also disable the rest of the desktop including the right click and any other desktop icons. If you want your desktop back, you just need to turn it off. This is solely from my observation on Fences only. I am not the Dev. So I might be off.

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

 

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

Press the "Win+D" again as you set it on your system to "Toggle" the Fences in front as you mentioned in your post above.

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top

Hello,

Sorry to hear you are having trouble.

This is a known issue (with an effective workaround for the moment) that we are looking into.

Internal Ref: FEN-148

Thanks for the feedback.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top

Thanks. Hopefully this can be resolved soon. I don't want to turn off the toggle function because it brings great convenience.