The fact that Stardock Central was phased out explains why it did not recognize any of the Stardock programs that were installed.
I compared the recently upgraded/installed Fences 2 program folders to the Stardock program folders that were not uninstalling and noticed that the Fences program had an Uninstall subfolder with an uninstall.xml file whereas the others had no subfolders at all. I surmised that something had deleted the subfolders including the Uninstall file so I reinstalled each of the programs, the Uninstall folders and files were created and I was then able to delete the programs without an error.
I suspect that maybe a previous unsuccessful attempt to delete these programs left the Program Folders in an incomplete state.
I had installed Win 10 on a "test" machine on my home LAN. The default install option for the Win 8 "production" machine (built several years ago) running the Stardock program was to synchronize accounts with any other Win 8 device using the same Microsoft account signon. Since it was the only Win 8 machine, synchronization was never an issue. As soon as I installed Win 10 (which also has synchronization turned on by default) and logged on using my Microsoft account signon to validate the install, Win 10 synchronized with Win 8 and messed up the startup of my start 8 menu replacement (not Stardock) and any associated add-on/customization programs. The computer froze every time I logged on my Win 8 account. I tried to uninstall my Win 8 start menu replacement and all Stardock programs, to no avail. I tried restoring the Win 8 computer to previous restore points, but because each restore point was created with the synch option on, everytime I logged into my account, the synch would repeat and hang the computer on login. I finally turned off the Win 10 computer and recovered from a month old restore point. I have now started preparing the Win 8 computer for a potential Win 10 upgrade by removing any customization programs that I suspect may interfere with the upgrade.
The only program that I am hesitant to uninstall is Fences 2. Making a commitment to Fences is a bit of a no-return decision. Once you have a significant number of desktop links buried in Fences, an uninstall leaves you with a mess of desktop icons.
Has anyone performed a Win 10 upgrade with Fences installed? Or was it necessary to uninstall it, upgrade to Win 10, and reinstall Fences?
The Win10 upgrade on my "test" computer failed! The rollback to Win 7 failed! A subsequent restore of the hard drive from a backup failed! A clean install of Win 10 would not complete without deleting all partitions on my hard drive. I have spent a couple of weeks now reinstalling all my programs. So much for a simple upgrade!
It isn't clear what the cause of the Win10 upgrade failure was. Microsoft was familiar with the symptoms but didn't have a clue as to cause. Their recommendation was to rollback and have another run at it. Keep doing that, they said, it would eventually work. As I indicated above, the rollback failed.
I suspect that the failure was due to some of the customization software running on my PC at the time of the upgrade. Hence, my decision to uninstall the Stardock programs, just in case. And hence my interest in anyone's experience with Fences and the upgrade.
