Fences 6 Can't Restore

Is this the right place to open tech support issues?

I see there's a Fences subforum. I will move this topic there.

Hello,

Sorry to hear you're having issues. It's possible something got corrupted during the power failure. Was Fences 6 newly installed? If not, you should still have some saved layouts within Fences 6 itself. I'm not quite sure why you'd need to rely on older Fences 5 backups.

Also, this might be related to OneDrive desktop sync being turned on unexpectedly—especially if it was off before. When that happens, icons often get displaced from their designated Fences, which is a common culprit. Please check if OneDrive sync is active. If so, try turning it off and manually moving your desktop icons from the OneDrive desktop folder back to the original Windows desktop folder. Once that's done, your saved layout should be able to restore the icons back into their Fences.

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant.

Hi, Basj. Sorry for the confusion. I didn't mean that I was relying on Fences 5 backup files. I was just mentioning that I had never had any problems doing restores when I was using Fences 5. 

Fences 6 was not that recently installed. I've been using it for about a month. 

Actually, I recently also started using my OneDrive sync, so that could also be a culprit. I'm not a real of OneDrive and would gladly disable it completely if I could figure out how. I actually seem to have two different OneDrive locations on two different drives.

I paused OneDrive and copied the files in the OneDrive\Desktop folder to the Desktop location at the top of my File Explorer hierarchy. I then tried to sync a Fences backup from two days ago, but, again, nothing happened. I don't even believe Fences is trying to do anything. Should there be some kind of activity indicator that it's restoring or something?

If it were working as intended, the effect should be immediate. And if there’s any visual indication designed to appear, I doubt it would ever show up.

As for why it’s still not working, I honestly can’t say. It could be anything. Power failures can do strange things to a system—I’ve had one take out an entire hard drive before.

At this point, the most practical way forward might be to manually reorganize the icons back into their respective Fences.

Thanks again.

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

I was afraid that might be the answer. That's going to be painful. There are few hundred that I had organized into a dozen different Fences by specific order. And now I also see that from trying the copy from Desktop to Desktop with OneDrive paused that I have copies of icons on my desktop. It's not going to be pretty.

Thanks for trying to help, though. I appreciate it.

I am sorry, I wish I can be more helpful on this one. I know its hard to organize hundreds of icons. I would like to recommend moving forward, that you move your icons/documents into actual folders and create a Folder portal Fences instead. This way it should not get easily move around or drop off from its Fences.

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

That seems like a good suggestion, but I'm not sure I understand the process. Are you suggesting creating an actual folder, let's call it C:\Applications as an example, and putting the shortcuts/icons into that folder? How do you turn that folder into a desktop Fence that can be displayed on the desktop and function like a normal fence that is created on the desktop, i.e. moving icons between them, rolling up, etc.?

You need to create a Folder Portal Fence. Refer to my short video below. The video show that I have create a folder and move some of my desktop shortcuts into that folder. (Apps Shortcut1), few steps to create Folder portal Fence. The one I show below is using via explorer. 

Right click on that folder->click on Show more option-> Show this folder on the desktop. This will create a Folder portal Fence. It work just like a normal Fence where you can roll up and down and you can just click and drag to move desktop item into that folder. Try it, it might work better for you.

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

That is really cool. If it will help prevent things like I'm experiencing now I will definitely do it. Is there a method to change an existing Fence into a  Folder Fence?

I tried to do this with a test folder, but my folders in Explorer do not have either the Show More Options ability or the Show This Folder On Desktop with the Fences icon. Do I need to enable something in Fences for this to work?

Perhaps, you don't see it because you on Fences 5, while I am on Fences 6. I believe on Fences 5, you just need to click and drag to make a rectangle on your empty desktop area and select from the menu "Create Folder Portal". Refer to my screenshot below. Than you will need to browse to that Folder with your shortcuts.

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

To clarify, I am on Fences 6. Holding the click and drag seems to be working now. I think part of the current issue that there are so many icons squeezed onto my desktop space that it's really bogging down the ability to work with the desktop. Every time I try to move one where it should be the others are start moving to update their relative position. I guess I could just turn off Auto-Arrange icons for now.

There seems to be a catch to this: if I create a fence portal, it won't me move an object out of that fence portal to a regular. It will only allow me to move it to the Desktop proper.

Other things I've noticed:

Dragging icons into the fence portal doesn't auto-update the fence portal based on the defined sort order.

I also cannot get the fence portal to display the folder name. In fact, I can't even get the icon to grab the fence portal and drag it. It seems to be treating it just a shortcut to a folder instead of a fence.

What a mess I'm in.

Yes, one of the limitations of Folder Portal in Fences is that it doesn’t support disabling sorting (i.e., “Sort by None”) or allow icons to be freely arranged in any order. So it may not be the ideal solution for your situation.

That said, Fences does include advanced logging capabilities. If the main issue—where icons drop off and the restore function doesn’t work—reappears and can be easily reproduced, you can generate a log report. This can then be submitted to Support/Development for review to help identify the root cause.

Let us know if you’d like to proceed with this. There are a few specific steps involved, and we’ll be happy to guide you through them.

Thank you.

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

My fence portals seem to be behaving completely differently than how you've described. They are letting me place icons anywhere I want in the portal, allowing me to have them in the sequence I wish. Oh, well. I'll try it for a while and see how things go. I'm hoping that since so many icons will now be in folders that they are safe from any desktop tragedies.

I am glad to hear that. But, I am Interested to see how you achieve that. Perhaps you can post a video showing it, so we understand what your mean.

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

What I've actually discovered with the portal fence is that it will allow me to place a new icon that I drag to it in any position. However, sometime later (not immediately), if I go back to the portal fence it will have resorted by name, even though no sort method is specified. I can also refresh after moving an icon and it will go update the name-based sort. Since I don't want icons sorted by name in all cases, I will probably only use a portal fence for a situation where I don't care about the icon sequence.

We are having this same issue with Fences 6.  It doesn't restore from a back up...

Hello,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. Please try these steps.

1. Open up Fences 6 Configuration 
2. Click on "Layout" tab
3. On Layout auto-adjustments setting.
4. If you already on "Store my layout on a per-monitor.." setting, try to change it to any one of those 3 others option. Switch back to "Store my layout on per-minitor.." setting after that.
5. Try the restore again, see if it working.

Ref: https://forums.stardock.com/539482/get;3982878 

Try that and report back.

Thank you,
Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant.

HI Basj,

I tried what you suggested and, at first, it seemed to work but it didn't restore the fences we had created, it made the "default" categories instead.  So then I tried it again and this time it wouldn't do anything at all.  Any other ideas?  I'm an attorney and have thousands of desktop items so this is massively disruptive to my workflow.

Thanks,  Phil

Look like you issue is unique to your system, please create your own new thread and we will try to help you from there. Also, include more information.

1. Windows full version and OS Build number. Please use Winver.exe.
2. Fences 6 full version numbers.
3. Was Fences recently upgraded from previous version? If yes, which version 3, 4 or 5?
4. If its a new installed, was it ever work before? If it did, what changed since it start not working?

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

Those replies on our end were from my assistant, Scott who does my IT. I am a technical dummy. How do I create my own thread? Thanks - Phil

You should be able to create a new thread by click on the "New Topic" button.

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant