I found another article saying that the effect appears as soon as you open any Windows Explorer window. I tried this out and it really depends on the Windows Explorer on my machine.
Once a Windows Explorer has been opened, file changes are not being refreshed. To kill this effect, I have to close ALL explorer.exe processes and start only one through the Task Manager. Refreshing then works fine until you open another Windows Explorer window.
It seems like I have to use an Explorer alternative like Total Commander for file management. It really is unbelievable that Microsoft still hasn't brought out a patch; this bug seems to have been talked about around the web for over six months now.