icons on desktop will not drag

aakaak · 01 Jul 2016

Win 10, 64 bit, recent upgrade from Win 7.

Beginning this afternoon, all of a sudden, the icons on the desktop will not drag, they are fixed in place.

I can delete them, open them, move them via right-click and 'copy to' or 'move to'. They simply will not move.

I've tried restarting the computer but the behavior persists.

There has been other difficulties that might be related,

if the computer has been doing nothing for a while, an horu or more, it takes about a minute or so before it will do anything even though I have it set never to sleep.

For the past week or so when I turn it on in the morning the desktop will not display until I right-click it.

Ztruker · 02 Jul 2016

See how it works if you boot to Safe Mode or Safe Mode with Networking.

To get there, click on the Start button. click on the Power5 icon then hold down the Shift key and click on Restart.

If everything works okay there then something is starting at boot that is causing the problem. Use Clean Boot to isolate to culprit.

See here: How to Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 10 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts

aakaak · 03 Jul 2016

Thanks. That didn't help because I couldn't see any icons on the desktop in safe mode.

However I did figure out the culprit was Fences v1, which I should have thought of immediately.

I had been using the trial of the new version since I upgraded to Win 10 but then it ran out and I'm too chintzy to buy it so I installed the last free version.

Is there any way to make it work?

Ztruker · 03 Jul 2016

Is that Stardock Fences or some other vendor? As for making it work, best to post in the vendor forum.

aakaak · 04 Jul 2016

Yes, it's Stardock Fences.

I'd feel hesitant about posting in their forum because they may feel uninterested in helping me make an early free version work when they'd really like to get $10 out of me for the good version.

[edit: other behaviors keep on regdardless, though at first they did not].