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After using Windows 7 for a while (say, a few hours), Explorer always stops refreshing my desktop, and I have to close it and re-open it. E.g.: When I delete a file, it doesn't seem to go away even though it does; I have to press F5 to refresh the desktop.

Is there a fix for this?

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No, its a windows bug, hitting F5 will refresh whatever window is open, sometimes you have to hit F5 several times, welcome to Windows. – Moab Jan 2 '11 at 22:33
Yeah I suspected it was probably a bug. And haha I'm not exactly new to Windows (I just thought someone might have a solution for this bug... I've used Windows ever since I was born..) but thank you for the welcome! :) – Mehrdad Jan 2 '11 at 22:37
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3 Answers

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There are several reasons for this behavior.

One case is that of a badly-written (de)installation program which creates or deletes icons but doesn't refresh the desktop. As the desktop doesn't always auto-refresh, nicely-written installers do the F5 for you.

A second case is that of an installed product that interferes with the desktop refresh, for example TeraCopy in this thread. You might try to remember which product you have called for the first time just before this happened.

A third and more remote possibility is a bug in the video driver. Ensure that you have the latest version from the manufacturer's website.

EDIT

If the problem is Explorer rather than only the desktop, this is a problem that is reported in Windows since XP and until today. Many remedies have been suggested, which worked for some people. Here are some of them:

  1. Ensure that the antivirus isn't the cause
  2. Regedit to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Update, UpdateMode entry, and change the value of the last digit from 1 to either 2 or 7.
  3. Regedit to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Control Panel\Desktop, right-click, New Binary Value, rename to ExplorerRefreshOnRename, double-click and change the value to "0001", press OK.
  4. At the end of this thread, a registry update is suggested (create first a system restore point).
  5. Another suggestion from the same thread is to regedit to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{BDEADE7F-C265-11D0-BCED-00A0C90AB50F}\Instance and set DontRefresh to 0.
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Huh... unfortunately I don't think any of these are the cause, but thank you for your reply! – Mehrdad Jan 3 '11 at 15:12
Could you then describe which desktop changes are done by which products? – harrymc Jan 3 '11 at 15:56
It's Explorer: I rename a file, but it doesn't refresh (the old name stays). It's obviously renamed, though, since if I try moving it, it says it can't find the item anymore. – Mehrdad Jan 7 '11 at 19:58
I added some more stuff for Explorer on this well-known problem. – harrymc Jan 8 '11 at 12:02
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I've solved this problem deleting iconcache.db file :) Open your task manager and kill the explorer process. Then choose open application and digit cmd and press enter.

In dox box use the following commands:

CD /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local

DEL IconCache.db /a

EXIT

And then use task manger to open application explorer.exe

Have fun :)

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I found that the problem corrects itself if I close all instances of Windows Explorer. Upon reopening Explorer, everything refreshes correctly.

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