Win 7 Desktop does not auto-refresh

Anonymous
2009-11-04T03:31:49+00:00

Saw another thread on this, but no solution.  Two different laptops, both clean installs.  Intermittently, when I delete or move files on the desktop, the icon remains.  I have to manually refresh to clear the deleted/moved files.

Any ideas?

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Anonymous
2010-04-07T17:13:28+00:00

Yup, Deckard solved the problem. Here is his post from the other thread for quick reference. His solution worked for me:

"I've read this thread to the end and I've tried all the solutions posted... obviously to no avail.

The bug repeats itself, not randomly but constantly, in any situation, folders, libraries - sorted by name or by whatever.

I then tried something different, which instead WORKED , and here it is.

  1. I backed up the registry.
  2. Searched for occurrences of the word refresh and found this key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID{BDEADE7F-C265-11D0-BCED-00A0C90AB50F}\Instance

which contains three subkeys. One of them, curiously enough, is DontRefresh and it has a value of 1 (turned ON)

  1. I then changed the value to 0 (turned OFF) and hit F5 to refresh and save the now changed registry.

Guess what? Now, everything (moving, deleting, copying) works and even the Trash Bin refreshes immediately.

I will keep you posted in the next few days to tell you whether the fix still works.

Good luck.

PS: I forgot to say that I have 3 machines and they respectively run Win7 Ult, Win7 Pro and Win7 Home Premium. Of course all of them showed this bug.

  8 days and several reboots since the fix and everything is still working fine on all three machines."

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Anonymous
2009-11-04T14:13:31+00:00

Hello tspencer103,

Thank you for posting.

Third party software might be responsible for this behavior. I would suggest you clean boot Windows to find out the culprit. A clean boot helps to eliminate software conflict. Follow the steps in this KB article to perform this task

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135

Please post back your findings.


David O

Microsoft Answers Support Engineer

Visit ourand let us know what you think.

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86 additional answers

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-03-08T17:34:08+00:00

    A simple trick, might not always work, but worth a try...

    Change the size of your desktop icons, then change it back to what you like (i.e. right click [Desktop], select [View], and switch between [Large Icons], [Medium Icons] and [Small Icons].

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-02-19T23:24:15+00:00

    Just to add to this for a long time I was experiencing the same issue and gave up trying to find a solution, I just recently performed a driver update that solved the issue.

    In my particular case an ATI Video/Display Driver update from Windows Update caused the issue. After removing the update or simply installing the latest video driver from ATI directly, the issue was fixed.

    I confirmed this when it started happening again to me recently. I checked the last piece of software installed was the ATI Driver update and I just went straight to ATI's support page and downloaded the latest catalyst package and overwrote the driver, rebooted and the problem was fixed once again.

    I don't know that this is the problem for everyone running into the issue but the few instances I've found on other forums that users reported it disappeared was after removing video driver updates or installing ones other than microsoft suggested/provided ones.

    I know hoihoi8all ready mentioned this but just to add I do believe this is at least 1 valid solution for some people. 

    Be aware you take a risk when installing Optional Windows Updates everyone. Driver updates are not always reliable from Microsoft. And @tcwota, I bet thsi problem will still be reported when SP1 goes public, this was supposed to be fixed with Vista sp2 nevermind Win 7 retail or sp1rc or public lol.

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-02-08T14:10:48+00:00

    Problem appears to be fixed with SP1.

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