I did the purge, then reboot, then reinstall, and restore snapshot, which so far has fixed it. The thing is, last year when I was on the trial and considering buying, it was about $15CDN for the permanent Fences 4 license. Then a week later, it went up to $25CDN for the same thing (which is still the price on Steam). I liked the product, so I bought it before the price went up again.
It's only been a year, and you guys have already switched to wanting $14/yr as a subscription, or $41CDN for the a permanent license to the same program that was $15CDN when I first looked last year - Fences 4.
What's the price going to be when I need to upgrade to a completely new version of Fences? At this rate, it will be the cost of an official Windows license, for something that has one purpose - desktop clutter management. This is more than boiling the frog, and more than adjusting to inflation.
If you want me to consider purchasing upgraded Fences licenses in the future instead of looking at a free option (which there are at least a few) that may not do as much as Fences but do what I *need* (all I really use Fences for is the basic fences, fence rollup and double click to hide/show - I could live with fences only as a free option if that's what it comes down to), you're going to have to do better than having a standard update procedure potentially break things and need to waste the paying users' time. I've never had to reinstall 7zip for an update error, or anything really - I install it on a fresh Windows install, and it works fine for years (even after updates), at which point I do a new system build and reinstall 7zip, repeating the "no issues" process.
If paid software can't do better, there isn't much point in paying for it. Especially when the price keeps going up.