Game, Valorant, interference - Explorer injections

Unable to "Disable" Fences

from Stardock Forums

Windows Version Number: Windows 11 Pro 64-Bit
App Version: 3.1.8.5

Using fences today will cause mousehooks injected to Explorer to interfere with with user interaction with games such as Valorant. 

I find that FPS can drop to single digits during mouse moves with Fence hooks active. I suspect this is those hooks attempting to evaluate the need to render animations with the desktop. 

First Solution - I opened fences and disabled it as well as disabling it for startup. This worked for a couple weeks. 

Second Solution - As of this week I have found that the issue returned despite having fences disabled. To prevent any means of startup I have configured the security to "Deny Everyone" on the fences program folder.  This makes fences unavailable completely without a change to that security and reboot. It has resolved the gaming observations confirming the returned problem is Fences can startup despite being disabled. 

  1. Is this a bug solved in another version? 
  2. How else can I disable Fences outside of simply unchecking enable in the GUI?
Stardock Software Fences Type: Bug Report
268 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Hello,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. I have forwarded your problem/question to Stardock Support Team for their assistance. Please keep an eye on this thread for any updates. We appreciate your feedback and patience. Thank you.

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Hi David, we'll keep note thank you.

Fwiw - Fences' global mouse routines are very (and I can accentuate very) lightweight. They do not have much meat whatsoever, do not have blocking operations, and do not evaluate, trigger or execute renders. You'll notice that when moving mouse over other windows, explorer.exe CPU does not change, whereas it does if you're over explorer. The mouse logic only does anything at all during mouse downs/ups.

Your "Deny Everyone" attempt to modify system security is likely missing pieces, perhaps such as object-level inheritance, or SYSTEM permissions, etc. Fences cannot startup if you actually succeed in doing what you said what you did. Removing permissions feels a bit of a linux-y strategy which isn't necessarily the same here, as again all of Fences lives within that directory, and if you succeeded, it simply would not be able to load; there by definition is no "maybe its still Fences" scenario.

While we'll investigate, neither of these issues are bugs to what we're aware and may be conflict with some other software. But to your point, we should probably have a setting somewhere for that if regardless, if someone strongly wishes to not have various types of hooks deployed for the sake of the extreme-end compatibility that we would like to accomodate that that can be possible. We'll look at adding an HKLM for "NoMouseHook" (used for peek dismissal and peek taskbar-corner-clicking, if enabled)  "NoKeyboardHook" (used for peek hotkeys) to prevent load-up for sake of helping users debug issues on their system. (Always possible that something about the game doesn't appreciate hooks existing on the system at all, and might react similarly to other similar hooks etc; unclear.)

Groupy 2 - Organize multiple applications into grouped tabs on your Windows desktop
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

In reflection, yes immediately I'm thinking "yeah this is probably a hidden anti-cheat mechanism; they're just not telling you. but it's meant to ruin your day if you're using a mouse observer of any kind, even if effectively empty". As noted we'll be adding ☑️ New feature will be called "gaming mode" :)

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

I would not be surprised if an anti-cheat update brought this about given I have had Fences installed and running for hundreds of in-game hours without issue before. This is a new issue but I can confirm Fences running is the culprit of the behavior. 

The deny everyone approach works for several things like this for me. Hell, I have used it to circumvent group policy pushes from corporations before where I felt the organization should not be auto-sorting my desktop icons for example. Deny everyone on the given registry key and group policy fails to adjust it. 

When I had Fence disabled but was still finding the Fences program folder locked I had to find another way.