Okay, I wonder if part of the problem was using a FENCES shortcut that did not quite tally.
I went into Start> All Programs> Stardock> Object Desktop and selected the FENCES icom to send to desktop.
When I use that shortcut, to bring up FENCES, FENCES comes up okay.
So, maybe I might have been using a shortcut that was not quite kosher.
All seems fine now.