Hello,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. Please try, uninstall Start11, reboot immediately (important), re-download latest version available in your account product download page: https://store.stardock.com/myaccount/products  . Install it, reboot immediately again. Retest it and report back.

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

basj,

Okay, well that was a lot of frustration.

So you know where this is all headed... my license for Start11 originates in my ObjectDesktop subscription.

I uninstalled Start11 via OD.  Restarted.  Oh btw, I made a backup of my Start11 settings before uninstalling.  I told the uninstaller to remove all settings, and rebooted when directed to do so.

I reinstalled via OD since I have no direct download link to Start11 on the "My Downloads" page you provided.  Well, that's not entirely true.  I see there is a "View Individual Downloads" link on one of the OD panels on that page.  I hadn't noticed that, and just assumed it would be an equivalent install through my OD subscription anyway. 

Nope! It installed 1.55.  Why?  Don't you keep OD up to date?  If you had, it would have a) reduced my time and frustration, and given you cleaner metrics when it comes to hearing back on the results of troubleshooting steps.  As Fences and Start11 are really the only two products out of the OD suite that I actively use, I'm now considering whether it makes sense to continue with that subscription.  You've forced me into cost analysis mode with this one.

After installing 1.55, I was offered an upgrade to 2.5, so I did that.  And, of course, rebooted whenever directed.

On the other side of the 2.5 install (and the 1.55 install for that matter) I was asked to enter a license key, purchase one, or start a 30-day trial.  Why?  I installed via OD.  The license key should automatically apply to an OD install.  As I do not have an individual Start11 license key, I gave it my OD key hoped for the best.  Thankfully, it unlocked successfully with that key.  But again, if OD is installed on a computer all of its included apps should automatically be unlocked.

I restored my Start11 settings next, and absolutely nothing happened.  I mean nothing.  Nothing at all.  I thought, "well, I'm not being asked to restart my computer, but I wonder if that will work to apply the restored settings".  Restarted, and yes, I was back to where I started.  Why is there no restart request upon settings restore?  Clearly one is needed.

Has any of this helped the situation?  NO.

Prior to going down this uninstall road, it was dawning on me that there seems to be a particular program that is implicated in this odd behavior.  But this behavior was never observed before Start11 2.5, appeared immediately after installing 2.5.  That program is Luxea Pro Video Editor 7 from ACD Systems.  You know, the folks that make the ACDSee suite of photo management and editing software.  Luxea Pro is a surprisingly good video editor that mostly flies under the radar for some reason.  Luxea Pro 7 has not had an update in at least a year.  ACD Systems offers a free trial here: https://www.acdsee.com/en/free-trials/

Maybe you could do some testing and if you can confirm the issue, maybe work with ADC Systems to uncover whatever bad blood exists between your two programs.

Thanks for the help.

Oh, and to answer the other question raised in this thread, I am using Start11 on a laptop that is connected to an external 27" BenQ 1080p  monitor that mirrors the laptops screen.  I boot the laptop, then close the lid thereby reducing the video to a single primary external monitor.

My OD shows Start11 V2 also, so I don't know why I got 1.55, but that's nothing I can answer.

As for the license key, making the process easier for your users when installing/uninstalling via OD is a choice.  Automatically activating an application installed via another registered, subscription-based Stardock application whose whole purpose seems to be to allow for easy installation of the listed applications seems like a very reasonable expectation.  To just say "no" as you did tells me your choice is to not make it any easier.  Your call.

Restarting was done whenever requested by the installers and uninstallers.

Uninstalling Luxea Pro is an unnecessary action.  The problem only exists when Luxea is running.  

I opened the lid of the laptop and tried again with Luxea and the lag occurred in that monitor configuration as well.

The lag seems to occur whenever something new has happened in Luxea.  If I do something in Luxea (eg., perform some video edit or playback operation), then the taskbar will be unresponsive.  If I wait it out until it starts responding again, then I can move freely about the various running programs, check mail, post on social media, etc.  I can even look at Luxea, and as long as I don't do anything in Luxea, the system remains responsive.  But if I then go back to Luxea and do something in it (e.g., continue to edit a video) and then try to click another program on the taskbar, I'll get the lag back again.  Perhaps you can discuss this with ACD Systems and see if you can figure out why this is happening.

Thank you.

No lag was ever noticed until 2.5 installed which I believe happened this past weekend (around 2025-01-18 or 19).  It started to become obvious that Luxea Pro 7 was running whenever the lag was observed, so by around Monday, I was watching to see when the lag occurred and found the definite correlation to using Luxea.  If Luxea is not running, there has never been any lag observed.

Thank you for testing with Luxea there.  As luck would have it, you're not seeing this problem, and it looks like it will therefore just be something I have to live with.  Typically, I use Davinci Resolve Studio to exit videos for my YouTube channel, but there are some effects that Luxea does well and I haven't figured out how to do in Davinci Resolve yet, so editing sometimes involves a couple of different editors.  So, although frustrating when happening, it's probably not going to be a daily frustration for me.  

Due to bad experiences with the transition on to and then trying to get back off of Stardock betas, I don't do that.

For me: I toggled off the "Let Start11 enhance the taskbar" option, let it restart Windows Explorer, then toggled the enhanced taskbar back on. So, far the problem has gone away. I will let you know if it starts happening again.

"Probably"?  If you have any higher confidence, then when will that beta go live?  Like Penguinix, I also had a Windows update around the same time, but for me, I didn't seem to have any lag issue without first doing something in Luxea Pro 7.

Uninstall start11, reboot then install the 2.51 beta as I suspect files were.not replaced correctly.

From the description it sounds like the issue that was resolved in 2.51.

The installer hands the file replacements over to the OS to perform on reboot for locked files.  It is not possible to unlock the files as the OS has them in use.

On some computers this does not happen consistently (it is a low percentage) and as of now we are unsure if this is a bug in the vendor provided installer tool, Windows itself, OR a third party utility is messing with this, perhaps wiping out the registry keys that the OS uses for this.

This is something that is currently under active investigation with the Stardock Fences installer package and we are looking at potentially changing from the installer software that is in use.

Hi Neil, thanks for your help with this. I followed your instructions - uninstalled Start11, rebooted, installed the 2.51 beta - to do a fresh install. I purposely didn't restore my saved config file - the only change I made to stock settings was to enable the enhanced taskbar.

With this switched on, I experienced the same stuck/lag issues as I originally did when upgrading to 2.5. The lag gets triggered when I skip to the next track, and the only way to return the OS to working order is to quit MediaMonkey 2024. This issue didn't occur with Start11 2.1, and so far seems to be confined to this single Music app on my computer (desktop PC running Windows 11 x64 24H2).

Any further help or troubleshooting steps appreciated 👍

Hi, thanks for your reply. I generally don't use the MicroPlayer in MediaMonkey, and have the program set to minimize to taskbar (instead of the MicroPlayer).

However, I've found I can workaround the lag issue, if I enable "Always show tray icon" and "Close to tray" in MM settings. This just seems to let me bypass the taskbar for MediaMonkey.

I'll leave it there for now, until I have time for more troubleshooting, or a Start11 update is released that fixes this issue for me (and others).

Hi Neil, I have global keyboard shortcuts setup in MediaMonkey to do this.

I'm also happy to report that the new 2.51 update has fixed my freezing issues with MediaMonkey 2024. The only thing I've noticed, is that it can take a few seconds for MediaMonkey to hand taskbar focus back to the last app when I minimize it - but I haven't noticed this in normal use - so the issue is fixed for me. Thanks to the OP for reporting this, and for everyone's help on here. 

(edited for clarity).