Icons disappeared from desktop, been resolved but trying to figure out what happened

Like title says, I did resolve this, but not sure what went wrong in the first place.

This happened with Fences 4 on Windows 11.

I recently upgraded to 2 displays.  Despite using Fences, I still have some stuff loose on my desktop, and wanted to keep it that way.  However these icons were showing on 2nd display desktop.  I selected them all, then dragged them to main display desktop.  That is when they disappeared.  I tried many Google non-Fences fixes, which didn't work.

When I uninstalled Fences, the icons reappeared.  When I reinstalled Fences and it auto-applied my fences again, the icons disappeared.  I did check the fences, none of them had these items.  When I checked my desktop folder, it showed these items, and when I tried dragging them to my desktop, it said they already existed, so nothing changed.

My thinking is Fences somehow created a new fence when I transferred the items from the other display, but somehow made it an invisible fence? Or broke when making an unintended fence, so they were getting sorted under something I couldn't access. It definitely seems like they were for some reason being sorted under a fence I couldn't see.

Not sure how much more I can help, if it's a bug I can provide as much info as I can think of to try and fix. I took a quick look to see if there was something in the main Fences program that listed all fences on desktop, so that if this happens again I can see if there is indeed an extra fence I did not intend to create that I could delete to get the items back on the desktop as loose icons... but did not see this. If there is a way to do this, please advise.

Basically the fix for me was to delete Fences in registry to get back to defaults, I could see all files on desktop again, but then of course had to remake all fences I *did* want to get most files sorted under fences again, and this let me see the loose files I wanted on the main display's desktop again.

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Reply #1 Top

Hello,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. Most probably that when your icons disappeared, you was on a new Fences desktop page. What you can do if it happen again, try disable Fences desktop page and see if the icons returned or you can try to navigate Fences desktop page.

Thank you,
Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant.