Has anybody seen any bad interactions between Winstep Nexus Ultimate and Dreamscene on Windows 7 Ult. x64? I know it runs fine on my other system that I don't use Nexus Ultimate on, but this one (Alienware m17X) dreamscene starts fine then crashes explorer.exe after about 10 minutes while Nexus remains fine.

And if Nexus is not running...?

There shouldn't be a problem, anyway... At least I am not aware of any.

No, the problem exists whether Nexus is running or not. I'll rephrase: Does Nexus Ultimate install or modify anything within the shell that might cause it to become unstable?

Not at all! Nexus is just like any other application, e.g.; Notepad - it does not in any way replace system files.

So, if the problem exists whether Nexus is running or not, the cause obviously lies elsewhere on your system. Unfortunately it could be anything, including bad/buggy video drivers.

I advise you to search Google for 'Dreamscene crashes explorer'. There seems to be a lot of pages regarding that.

I appreciate the response. I've been trying to solve this problem for a while now. I have already searched google for dreamscene crashes, explorer crashes, etc., and none of the solutions posted (for either vista or 7) worked for me. So like a good mechanic, I worked backwards with what I know is running in the background that did not come preinstalled with Windows 7. Well, I found my culprit: Stardock Fences. I disabled it and then trying a dreamscene, it has been running over two hours with no problems. Explorer runs at 126'000K/3%-5% CPU. With dreamscene on my CPU runs between 5%-7% at idle. I will keep it running to see if any irregularities pop up.

Now I have another issue. How do I go about making the desktop icons ONLY, respect my top dock's space? If I enable the "prevent maximized windows from overlapping the dock" option, it does prevent my desktop icons from moving behind the dock, but I still want the program/explorer windows to be able to overlap the dock. I have attached my desktop pics to give more of idea of how I have my desktop setup. I just want to prevent the desktop icons from going behind the top dock, but without affecting the window sizes. I can't use Stardock fences since I now know it has been causing explorer to crash. Is there any way to edit something in windows to change the borders of the desktop?

Not that I am aware of, because what causes the desktop icons to respect the space reserved by the dock is the very same thing that makes windows not overlap the dock (appbars).

Can you think of any desktop icon fence software other than stardock? Google has not been much help.

I think Stardock's Fences is unique.

Have you tried contacting them already regarding this issue?

I sent them an email today. We'll see if they reply back. In the meantime, I just turned off "auto arrange icons". They I manually arrange them on my desktop so that they aren't being blocked by the top dock. I can live with that considering Dreamscene is now working great.

You can always go and make dummy icons with a blank (transparent) icon glyph and a blank name, and put them where you don't want other icons to get.

i've run dreamscene with winstep xtreme without any problem. if there was an actual conflict between the app that enables dreamscenes and nexus ultimate i'm pretty sure running xtreme the problem would of showed itself. as for fences unless jorge comes up with something similar i'm afraid you will never get proper tech support. fences has had a prob with win 7 x64 for over a year now. plus it pisses me off you HAVE to have two fences by default. you cannot just have one. plus there is no reason for the app to adjust your folder view, or shutdown and restart explorer just to do it's job.

I'm gonna have to try that...I would have never thought of it in a million years! As far as Fences goes, I have always been able to use only one fence. I just delete all the Fences so there are none available, and then create the one I want to keep all my desktop icons in, making sure the borders don't overlap the dock. I found the trick to making sure the icons make it into the fence is to make sure the unfenced area is not tall enough to put icons in, so then explorer will place them into the fence by default. I did find that the problem Fences was creating with Dreamscene is that for the program to refresh itself and the desktop (as it does every so often), it tries to reset explorer.exe. This causes explorer to run high with cpu and memory until it crashes. Go figure.

just my 2 cents but after stardock waiting forever to release a version of windowblinds that actually works with 7, and fence problems and bugs i will never recommend a stardock program to anyone.

You know, one would think that with WindowBlinds having been so successful (Stardock's cash cow at the beginning) there would be a dozen me-too applications on the market competing with it.

However that never happened. There is a reason why Stardock is the only company (other than Microsoft itself, but those don't count and StyleXP variations are all hacks to the MS engine) that ever came up with a successful skinning engine for Windows. The same reason why I never even tried.

BECAUSE IT'S A BLOODY NIGHTMARE!

But Neil Banfield pulled it off. So kudos to a great programmer and an overall nice person (or so I hear, since I never talked to him directly).

As for the delays, I can understand that. There aren't many of us who can do these type of applications these days, and Stardock had them spread thin overall several projects (from what I understood, Impulse was sucking the customization side of Stardock dry).

No emails back from Stardock. Plus Fences has not been updated in over two years. I'm going to assume they have no plans to release a new version.