# Windows 7 Desktop Refresh



## CS5n531 (Jul 21, 2007)

My system has been running Windows 7 now for about 4 and a half months, and it has a tendency which I can no longer tolerate. The icons on my desktop will not automatically refresh - forcing me to hit F5 or right click my desktop and click Refresh.

For example: There is a folder named "Games". When I delete the Games folder, it will still show on my desktop until I hit Refresh, even though it is not actually there.

Is there any way to have Win7 automatically refresh my desktop for me? Thanks.


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## CS5n531 (Jul 21, 2007)

bump?


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## CS5n531 (Jul 21, 2007)

CS5n531 said:


> bump?


..no one?


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## TheOutcaste (Mar 19, 2009)

You are not alone. I have the same thing happening, running Win 7 Ultimate x64 on an HP Pavilion DV6933CL

A reboot will fix it for anywhere from one day to a week or more.
You can also just restart Explorer, and that sometimes fixes it.

Close all Explorer windows.
Start the Task Manager
Click *Start*, then *CTRL+SHIFT+Right Click* a blank area on the Start Menu (just above/to the right of the shutdown button works, or by your User Icon) then click *Exit Explorer*.
In Task Manager, click *File | New Task (Run...)*
Type *Explorer*, and press *Enter*.
I also run MS Virtual PC 2007 SP1; it works, but is not officially supported, and there are a few other odd issues that closing VPC2007 fixes. Main one is the tilde/grave accent key stops working, and sometimes the WinKey key stops working. Sometimes the Tab/WinKey/ESC keys won't work in the Virtual Machines, or the mouse buttons stop working in the VMs.
I don't know if it's related to the desktop not refreshing or not, it's never occurred when I haven't run VPC2007, but then it's run every day, as is UVNC, Yahoo Messenger and Firefox.

SFC, chkdsk, malware scans find no problems. Haven't found a cause yet.


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## i MaRk i (Dec 29, 2009)

Do you have any organizer (sp?) program for you desktop,

also it may be that Explorer does not have a high enough priority, set it a little high and see of that helps.

Turn off some of your start-programs. Click start then type "msconfig" then select the startup tab and 'uncheck' anything that you do not need to start on boot-up


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## CS5n531 (Jul 21, 2007)

TheOutcaste said:


> You are not alone. I have the same thing happening, running Win 7 Ultimate x64 on an HP Pavilion DV6933CL
> 
> A reboot will fix it for anywhere from one day to a week or more.
> You can also just restart Explorer, and that sometimes fixes it.
> ...


Thank you! Solved!


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

TheOutcaste said:


> You are not alone. I have the same thing happening, running Win 7 Ultimate x64 on an HP Pavilion DV6933CL
> 
> A reboot will fix it for anywhere from one day to a week or more.
> You can also just restart Explorer, and that sometimes fixes it.
> ...


I suddenly found myself recently having the dreaded problem too and whilst the above worked immediately it only lasted for a short time. I searched the web only to find that this WAS a very common problem but that no-one seemed to be complaining these days .. 

Someone somewhere in my searches mentioned about seeing a link with some Network problems that he had .. and I remembered that for some time now I have been switching off my mapped Network backup drive .. I was getting a pop up telling me that Windows could restore all Network Drives at Start Up .. The problem seems to have disappeared now that I ensure my Network drive is switched on before powering on .. 

I have the impression that the original problem was never fixed by Microsoft and still remains a bug to this day (No one ever came up with a guaranteed fix for the problem either from Microsoft community or from Microsoft herself that I could find) it's quite possible that the bug is triggered by any one of a variety sources .. and occasionally pokes it head up on current new systems as well, It seems to have affected XP, 7, 8 & 10 ...


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## jenae (Jun 17, 2008)

Hi, well we had success opening c:\users\desktop and deleting desktop.ini, a restart recreates the file and all is well. A stubborn case is fixed by deleting the Icon cache. Cmd as admin copy each line pressing enter afterwards.

taskkill /im explorer.exe /f
CD %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local
attrib -h iconcache.db
del iconcache.db
explorer.exe


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

Thanks for the update Jenae ...I'll bear that in mind if it should happen again .. 

as yet it hasn't although I will be testing it again after a few more days to see if the absence of the mapped drive causes the problem to reappear. 

There was so much information out there about this problem that it was really impossible to figure which way to go .. it was only a similar link between missing network links & lost refresh functionality that gave me a clue to my problem.


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