Windows Explorer doesn't refresh when moving/deleting

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Noel,

Thank you for your long hard work on this problem.

I've been coming back to this "ridiculously long discussion" from time to time since 2009. I've tried many things, none of which have worked. I am debating in my own mind if I should try Noel's suggestion above - perhaps if I buy myself a UPS...

I have experienced the problem all over the place - very commonly on my Desktop. Today I copied a photo from my camera (connected thru USB) to the desktop and it did not show up on the desktop. The file system knew that the file was there because the duplicate file dialog box popped up asking if I wanted to overwrite the existing file, etc.

I also have the problem of files not showing up when I do a search. I have been thinking that this was a separate problem, but perhaps it is the same problem. I have not read every post in this thread - has the search problem been mentioned in this thread before? Earlier today I did a search for *.MO in my User "My Videos" folder. Some of the *.MOI files showed up but non of the *.MOD files showed up.

In an earlier post someone (Noel?) made the point that Microsoft can't fix every bug that comes along in case it creates another problem. If that is the case then why does Windows Update post various frequent fixes for all kinds of other things - often for security bugs. It seems that MS can post fixes if they want to. Since this problem does not show up for everyone is it possible that the MS Development Team has written off this thread as a bunch of "whiners" (a word that flamers are fond of using in this thread)? Noel - are you in direct contact with these people? Can we reasonably expect a fix in SP2? When can we expect SP2 to come out?

-Mark

Tuesday, December 20, 2011 5:59 PM

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproui/thread/ecbecc00-f3e7-429f-87cd-8900fc313add

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You're welcome, Mark. I'd like nothing more than to discover a group of tweaks that could work around this problem for everyone.

You could always try the cache setting change briefly. It really doesn't raise the chances of wiping out your entire world that much (I've used it on multiple systems for years). Multiply in the possibility of you losing power for the few minutes you try it out and the risk seems pretty small.

I also have the problem of files not showing up when I do a search. I have been thinking that this was a separate problem, but perhaps it is the same problem.

I don't think so - at least not entirely. Windows Search problems are at least in part an entirely different issue. There's another "ridiculously long" thread about that somewhere around here... Ah, here it is:

My assessment of this is that Windows Search isn't really a search at all (bad idea), and it's coupling with the indexing facility, which can easily be shown to fall out of date with reality, makes it a poor implementation of that bad idea. Just seeing it fail once - as you did - to find an obviously existing file will blow your confidence. I suggest investigating a freeware tool called grepWin by Stefan Kung. It's a bit geeky, but by golly it finds what's there.

In an earlier post someone (Noel?) made the point that Microsoft can't fix every bug that comes along in case it creates another problem.

That may have been me. It certainly makes a certain kind of sense.

I want to clarify: Microsoft has to weigh the risk of fixing something that may require big changes or a partial redesign to correct against the risk of that redesign causing people new problems. It seems to me the fixes that come down via Windows Update are all pretty isolated things. You hardly if ever even see a difference in the way things work from a Windows Update. Heck, even the Service Pack was like that.

That said, some of the problems have been in Explorer since Vista, and are turning up in the Windows 8 Developer Preview. One theory I toy with is that the smart folks at Microsoft who know Explorer's internals and could actually fix these problems retired wealthy or moved up into management where they've grown pointy hair. :)

-Noel

Edited by Noel Carboni Tuesday, December 20, 2011 8:26 PM

Tuesday, December 20, 2011 8:23 PM

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It seems that Microsoft either ignores, or doesn't care about this issue...

I thought that a mere SFC /SCANNOW will fix the problem, but sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't...

Nevertheless the problem seems to keep reproducing itself, tedious and everlasting...

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 1:21 AM

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To the best of my knowledge, SFC /SCANNOW will scan for and restore any files under "Windows System Protection". This could be effective if something or someone has altered or replaced a file.

I prefer to advise people to run SFC /VERIFYONLY first, since this just checks for problems without automatically fixing them. If this command tells you something IS wrong with the files under its purview, then running SFC /SCANNOW is probably a good idea.

-Noel

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 7:06 PM

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I think I have come across a POSSIBLE solution for the Explorer auto-update (or lack thereof) problem discussed in this thread. This solution was casually mentioned by another poster (Nucleo) in Part 1 of this massive discussion as a fix used in Windows XP for a similar problem, but I tried the exact same fix in Win 7 64-bit, and it seems to work.

So far the solution is working 100% on my machine, which previously had severe problems with Explorer not updating almost any time I added, deleted, or moved files around. Hopefully it won't end up being some temporary fix that mysteriously reverts back.

The fix is to create a registry key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Update]
"UpdateMode"=dword:00000000

In other words, go into the Registry, and in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control, create a key called Update. Within that, make a DWORD value named UpdateMode with value 0.

On my machine, the problem instantly stopped when I added this key. Please try this fix and report back whether or not it works for you.

Edited by Lurkout Wednesday, December 21, 2011 8:36 PM
Proposed as answer by rkleeman Monday, May 7, 2012 12:45 AM

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 8:30 PM

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According to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/192794/en-us and http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc976162.aspx, UpdateMode controls how System Policy (the ancestor of Group Policy) fetches the policy file.

System Policy and Explorer (or file system) are two different things. I'm puzzled how they can be related...

Thursday, December 22, 2011 5:35 AM

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According to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/192794/en-us and http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc976162.aspx, UpdateMode controls how System Policy (the ancestor of Group Policy) fetches the policy file.

System Policy and Explorer (or file system) are two different things. I'm puzzled how they can be related...

I am aware that theoretically, UpdateMode shouldn't affect this problem. But that was also the case even back with Windows XP, when at least some users saw it fix a similar problem. Perhaps it is affecting Explorer because of a bug in how Windows implements UpdateMode.

The auto-refresh problem with Explorer was easily repeatable on my Win 7 PC. I was experiencing it moments before I made the Registry change, and since making this change, I have not experienced a single instance of Explorer requiring a manual refresh. I've tried numerous times to make it fail, by copying, moving, and deleting files and folders, but it hasn't happened. Maybe the problem will reappear after a few days, but so far, it's still working.

There's no apparent harm in trying the fix, and it's certainly easy to undo if it doesn't work. At this point, I'm interested in finding out whether or not it works for users other than me.

Thursday, December 22, 2011 12:23 PM

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Okay; per the reports above so far none of the settings changes seem to work around the Explorer problems being addressed here.

The only things that are certain are that it works properly sometimes and/or on some systems. It seems hopeful seeing that it CAN work, but again and again we hear reports that make it sound as though it's at best intermittent and/or the odds of it working are dependent on yet unknown factors of system performance or user technique.

That it's possible to reproduce some kinds of failures on a freshly installed and fully updated system with no add-on software or settings changes is now certain.

While there's evidence that Explorer has been made to work better in Windows 8, it's sad that Microsoft hasn't taken the time to do whatever redesign is needed to make it work 100% reliably on the new system! Imagine the incentive of this alone to drive people currently using Windows 7 to buy the upgrade.

Of course it's not too late, but we're just not seeing participation here by Microsoft people who are directly involved, which implies they're looking elsewhere.

Why does it have to be that a company should consider itself too big and impersonal to respond to its customers with a simple "We're sorry for the trouble; we're looking into it"?

On the Adobe forums members of the Engineering staff regularly interact with customers. Some customers occasionally get miffed because they talk straight instead of candy-coating things like marketing people would, but overall the satisfaction people feel from knowing someone inside Adobe cares enough to answer is hugely positive.

Once in a great while we hear from Microsoft people here, but FAR too infrequently. When we do, the response from the concerned participants is positive. Note the response, for example, to Neal Chrisiansen in this thread: Atomic Oplock Discussion Problem stated, problem acknowledged, problem fixed, no 400 post threads on the subject.

-Noel

Edited by Noel Carboni Thursday, December 22, 2011 5:13 PM typo correction

Thursday, December 22, 2011 5:12 PM

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Well, I think the easiest way to repro faulty refresh is to open a folder, switch to another app, save something to this folder and then switch back to Windows Explorer. A good chance you'll have to press F5 to get your newly added file displayed in the file list.

Well this is the world we live in And these are the hands we're given...

Friday, December 23, 2011 12:53 PM

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Thanks for that suggested sequence, Exotic Hadron. I'm glad you responded - I've been wondering whether this "failure to update" issue may be something different than some of the other problems suggested above. Can you reproduce it pretty consistently?

You say "switch to another" and "switch back" in your description... Can you please be more specific? Are you using the apps full-screen, are you minimizing one while using the other? Does one completely cover the other? Does it happen more frequently with any specific app saving the files or with a particular file type? I don't think any of this should matter but who can say...

Can you suggest a specific folder to try it with, where you often/always see the problem?

Normally I work so that multiple windows are visible, and saving from one app while looking at the Explorer window showing that folder (and which of course doesn't have focus) I see the file just appear there, as it should. I just tried it a bunch of times, using a number of different folders in and out of libraries, both in Windows 7 x64 and in Windows 8 DP x64. Never did I see a failure to show the saved file - no refresh was needed.

I don't doubt you see the problem you describe.

But on the systems on which I am not seeing the problem, it works right. This is why I'm interested to try to see what's different between our systems.

-Noel

Friday, December 23, 2011 4:45 PM

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I've read everything from these three posts. Nothing worked for me. I remember one day I found a solution where you need to delete some file in %appdata% but I've forgotten which exactly. That worked fine for me, but just for a couple of days. I can't believe that there's no solution from microsoft yet.

Sunday, December 25, 2011 9:37 AM

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I've read everything from these three posts. Nothing worked for me. I remember one day I found a solution where you need to delete some file in %appdata% but I've forgotten which exactly. That worked fine for me, but just for a couple of days. I can't believe that there's no solution from microsoft yet.

I took a look in there. Could it be the IconCache.db perhaps?

Regarding this bug, I've encountered more weirdness since I last posted. Sometimes those little triangles will disappear from the folder list in the left-hand pane. I've also noticed Explorer likes to crash randomly. The cause involves leaving a Windows Explorer window open for any length of time. It can take minutes, or it can take hours, but it will eventually crash if left alone long enough. I was just renaming four files, and three refreshed properly after typing in their new names, but the fourth did not refresh. Kept trying to rename it, not realizing the bug had happened, and after a few failed tries I got a message saying the file didn't exist lol. Hit F5 and it reappeared with the proper name I had given it the first time. So far the only thing I've been able to reproduce without fail is what I've described in my previous post (second from the top in unthreaded view).

Tuesday, December 27, 2011 9:40 PM

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Guys, It looks like I found a solution which worked in my case. I've got some network paths which I can use in my work place. I had the problem when I was out of my office. I've deleted those network path and everything now works good. It looks like Explorer experiences some problem with unreachable network places. In any case from the discussion it looks like a bug which can have multiple sources...Microsoft should do something about it.

Proposed as answer by AmadeusW Saturday, February 9, 2013 5:27 PM

Thursday, December 29, 2011 9:18 PM

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Hello again,

I am one of the unfortunate people who has to deal with this no-refresh ridiculocity on a daily basis, and I check this thread, now plural, every so often. To add insult to the injury, the second thread cannot even be viewed by Internet Explorer, since it crashes. Only Chrome will display it. Nice!

So, if I take the risk and post profanity or some such offensive thing here, do you think MS guys would finally look at here? I'm running out of ideas to attract any attention to this serious issue from MS. And I see that the post Noel posted is marked abusive, is that such an attempt to withdraw attention, or did some idiot do this while Noel is trying to be helpful?

Anyway, I am speechless at this point about how IGNORANT MICROSOFT is. They have broken code that we paid for, so they should be the ones fixing it, not us, their customers.

Maybe we should send a letter to Bill or some high executive, since that worked like a charm every single time I did it! ;)

BTW, how many people tried this cache fix suggestion, and did it work; I could not understand what happened from the posts.

Best.

GT

Edited by GT-Force Wednesday, January 4, 2012 5:13 PM

Wednesday, January 4, 2012 5:10 PM

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It doesn't look like any one tweak listed so far definitively fixes or substantially works around this problem. This is what makes me think it's an issue with timing... Tweaks changing the efficiency of Windows (affecting the timing) could be responsible for a lot of the suggestions that don't seem to work.

All appearances are that there are one or more intermittent issues.

I have a whole litany of tweaks I typically apply to a new Windows 7 system, including config changes, disabling/enabling features, installing 3rd party software, and ultimately avoiding the use of Libraries entirely. Just recently I applied them all to a freshly installed Windows 7 system in a VMware virtual machine. While I was able to easily reproduce some problems with Windows Explorer when I first started, it got substantially more difficult to make Explorer fail (though still possible if very persistent) when I was done. This supports my thoughts that we have intermittent timing-based issues.

What's disturbing is that at least some of these problems appear to continue into Windows 8 Explorer, as delivered with the Developer Preview. They DO seem a little more difficult to reproduce, right out of the box, so it's possible some redesign has been done to address them, but apparently we have seen no hard fix yet.

GT-Force, do you have a repeatable way to reproduce a particular problem? If so, could you please list detailed steps to do so? That could help with testing as well as give Microsoft something to bite into if they choose to work on this.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Wednesday, January 4, 2012 5:34 PM

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give Microsoft something to bite into if they choose to work on this.

Ha ha, nice joke :( (ıf they did not choose to work on this until now, why would they ever? I lost hope...)

I did not trace my steps, but I think I just need to click a library for this to start happening after a restart. I do have mapped network drives that are usually not available, which sounds like a related problem. No, I never tried removing them, since it's supposed to be a feature, and I need to use it damn it, just like I need to be able to see the changes that I make in explorer!!! If I kill all explorer.exe instances, it goes away until it comes back, that is.

GT

Edited by GT-Force Thursday, January 5, 2012 3:28 AM

Thursday, January 5, 2012 3:27 AM

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I wasn't really joking...

My thinking is this: Microsoft might find it easy to overlook intermittent issues because they might happen only to a minority of people, while Microsoft employees have learned ways to use the system that don't cause the problems to happen, or maybe they all get modern supercomputers from their company that don't show the problem, or maybe they feel there are more important things to work on, or ... who knows why? Perhaps they find it convenient to just say, "it's something all those users installed on their systems that breaks Windows, so it's not our problem".

If we actually give them a direct step-by-step process for reproducing an obvious bug, and those of us with the time and capability reproduce and verify it on virgin (virtual) machines, then Microsoft could put even their junior engineers on the task, since they wouldn't have to think much but instead just fire up a debugger and watch it happen. An actual fix may be forthcoming after that.

Never underestimate the power of direct reproducibility to motivate software troubleshooting.

A thousand people saying "I saw an Explorer glitch happen" could be outvoiced by one saying "Do exactly these steps in this order on a clean Windows install to see it happen". Most problem reporting systems have a checkbox for "[ ] Reproducible?"... Think about that in the context of a manager arranging priorities and wanting his/her end-of-month statistics to look good.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Thursday, January 5, 2012 3:49 PM

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Hi - I have been having this issue for the last few weeks - after a Windows 7 reinstall everything was cool until I loaded Nero on my box. Then I found the problem being related to this. I then tried registering the vbscript.dll and it fixed my refresh problem. After 10 Nero uninstalls and fresh installs it finally took. I was burning for a few days and then Nero took a sh*t on me again. Now I'm back to trying this over again and still no luck - I seem to only have problems related to media apps like Nero, Win Media player, and vlc etc. I'm just hoping to add more food for thought here and sorry if this was brought up before - I tried my best to read all I could and came up empty about this.

1. Open an Admin Command Prompt window. To do so, click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as Administrator.

2. Type the following command and press ENTER:

regsvr32.exe vbscript.dll

Thanks for all the hard work being done on this issue by everyone (minus MS)

Ed

Proposed as answer by NiceGuyEddie69 Thursday, January 12, 2012 10:50 PM
Unproposed as answer by NiceGuyEddie69 Thursday, January 12, 2012 10:51 PM

Thursday, January 12, 2012 5:08 PM

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For 64 Bit

1.Start Menu -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Right Click on Command Prompt -> Run As Administrator.
2.Type “cd C:\Windows\SysWOW64″
3.Type regsvr32 vbscript.dll
If you don’t do Run as Administrator, the regsvr32 will fail. Also, be careful to run the command in SysWOW64, not System32! System32 on a 64-bit system actually contains the 64-bit system libraries.

32 Bit

1) Windows Accessories then Right Click on Command Prompt and run as admin
2) Type regsvr32 vbscript.dll then hit enter.
3) Now type Exit hit enter -

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Proposed as answer by NiceGuyEddie69 Thursday, January 12, 2012 10:52 PM

Thursday, January 12, 2012 10:52 PM

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Win 7 Ultimate N x64 w/SP1. UAC is set at default.

I could consistently reproduce this issue with files in my libraries\documents folder. I just made the 'Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing' change and the issue seems to be mitigated.

This, however, is NOT an acceptable solution as it leaves us wide open for data loss or corruption from a power outage. I don't see how M$ can ignore the issue. We're not making it up - there's videos showing the problem!

Edit - Nope, still broken even with the buffer flushing turned off.

Edited by Alceryes Saturday, January 14, 2012 8:46 PM SS

Saturday, January 14, 2012 5:41 PM

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For 64 Bit

1.Start Menu -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Right Click on Command Prompt -> Run As Administrator.
2.Type “cd C:\Windows\SysWOW64″
3.Type regsvr32 vbscript.dll
If you don’t do Run as Administrator, the regsvr32 will fail. Also, be careful to run the command in SysWOW64, not System32! System32 on a 64-bit system actually contains the 64-bit system libraries.

32 Bit

1) Windows Accessories then Right Click on Command Prompt and run as admin
2) Type regsvr32 vbscript.dll then hit enter.
3) Now type Exit hit enter -

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This does nothing to fix the explorer refresh issue on my system.

Sunday, January 15, 2012 11:28 PM

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Sorry, Mister Red-Box. I accidentally replied to your thread instead of quoting NiceGuyEddie69's.

Any update on this...?

Monday, January 16, 2012 9:42 PM

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anybody, help this?

in Task Manager end process Explorer.exe

in Task manager type new task - cmd.exe.

in CMD write this

CD /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local
DEL IconCache.db /a
EXIT

in Task manager new task - explorer.exe

This procedure delete only on file, but process explorer must be closed.

folder %userprofile%\AppData\Local delete file IconCache.db

The fix for Windows XP was find http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823291/en-us

For Windows 7 must wait

Edited by tstolik Thursday, January 19, 2012 8:45 AM

Thursday, January 19, 2012 8:39 AM

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In case happend via shortcut, please remake shortcut.

I got it.

I tryed to delete "IconCache.db", but the case of creating was not solved.

KB823291 could not solve, too.

KB132668 may solve.

best regards,

Friday, January 20, 2012 5:49 AM

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Try this, yesterday its work for me.

in folder options put "hide system files" to be visible.

after this, find on your Desktop files "desktop.ini". If it's not one, but two, you must delete these files.

change again the visibility of system files.

Friday, January 20, 2012 8:32 AM

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I guess these issues are just permanent. They'll never be fixed.

I have to agree with you, especially since we see at least some similar problems in the Windows 8 Developer Preview. This is why I have been trying to find ways to work around the problem, to get the best experience out of Windows such as it is...

One such way that seems to make a difference on some systems is to avoid using Libraries entirely.

Another is to avoid the use of the desktop for any kind of file activity. Yes, I know that involves retraining oneself, but in just using folders on the hard drive I don't see these problems.

Another thing that helps seems to be to turn off various unnecessary stuff, such as indexing, which appears to make the system snappier and less likely to run afoul of refresh issues.

The system seems to run best on fast, modern hardware (no surprise there - what kinds of computers do you think all the Microsoft people develop with in their richest of rich companies? Do you think their developers use computers more than a year or two old?).

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Edited by Noel Carboni Sunday, January 22, 2012 2:50 PM
Marked as answer by Noel Carboni Monday, January 23, 2012 8:17 PM

Sunday, January 22, 2012 2:13 PM

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So far this seem to solve my problem--thanks.

Sunday, January 22, 2012 4:45 PM

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As far as I can see nothing in this thread is being proposed as a "fix", though the tweaks listed may contribute to reducing the problems.

This is a discussion about what appears to affect the problems in the hopes of discovering ways to work around them and make Windows more useful and valuable. It's pretty clear there's no "quick fix" for them.

But, the plain and simple fact is that there are people who simply don't experience Explorer refresh problems in their day to day use of Windows. I'm one of them.

It just updates properly after each operation, shows the proper folder expansion icons - even with the schemes you propose to break Explorer in your animations.

Something is making a difference in the way it works on some systems. Wouldn't it be nice to know what that is and maybe with that undertstanding discover how to minimize it?

You have been helpful in trying to characterize the problems (there do appear to be more than one) by posting methods that on virgin Windows systems make it easy to reproduce Explorer display issues. Why do you feel investigating further is wrong?

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Edited by Noel Carboni Sunday, January 22, 2012 7:07 PM clarified wording to indicate there are likely multiple problems

Sunday, January 22, 2012 7:03 PM

http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/TestFolderTreeNonProblem.mp4

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Windows7 continues to have that intermittent problem too. See?

On a tweaked system I'm having difficulty seeing that problem too...

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Monday, January 23, 2012 7:33 PM

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You are not a detail-conscious person, Carboni.

It's not your place to criticize me here, but I may be better at this than you give me credit for. Did it ever occur to you that I might have chosen the way I did those tests on purpose?

Rather than encouraging me to try to break Windows, how about YOU try to retrain yourself to work with Explorer the way I have suggested instead? Only one of our approaches will yield a better working experience with Windows 7.

I don't even have my username displayed in the Start Menu, because I choose not to use that abstraction on purpose. It's not hard to learn to navigate into C:\Users\YourUsername.

Like I have suggested in posts above, learn to use Explorer on real folders on the hard drive and this will help you avoid Explorer problems.

The difference between us is that you seem to get some joy from reproducing problems, and I get none. Instead, I derive pleasure from finding ways to make the system work properly. That's okay, more power to you. Hopefully your showing Microsoft how to reproduce problems at will can bring them to fix it.

I'm interested in developing habits that help ensure my system works properly for me when I need it, because it's not about Windows, it's about getting work done.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Marked as answer by Noel Carboni Monday, January 23, 2012 8:15 PM
Unmarked as answer by Carey FrischMVP Sunday, September 8, 2013 11:26 PM

Monday, January 23, 2012 8:15 PM

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I don't see the bugs you're showing on my systems here. Nor do I want to. Nor does anyone here besides you want to - you're on your own.

Only one of us has suggested ways to work around such bugs. At least some folks have reported that they find the workarounds to be effective.

I agreed with you in a post above that Microsoft has left Explorer broken... What's left to argue about? Why don't you move on to something else - surely you have something better to do than to try to make arguments where there are none.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Monday, January 23, 2012 8:56 PM

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Hi everybody

I have spent over an hour to read all of the answers here. I of course face the same problems with refreshing etc which occurs often in my Win7 Ultimate x64.

In order to overcome this, I just performed a "Rebuild Icon Cache" using Stardock's Iconpackager. Immediately after the process completes (explorer.exe is restarted), everything turns back to normal so I can again copy/paste/delete/rename etc to view the updated contents, without hitting F5 (refresh).

This process actually deletes the hidden "IconCache.db" file.

To manually perform this (found by searching the internet), which is tested and works also :

Rebuilding the Icon Cache Database

1. Close all folder windows that are currently open.

2. Launch Task Manager using the CTRL+SHIFT+ESC key sequence, or by running taskmgr.exe.

3. In the Process tab, right-click on the Explorer.exe process and select End Process.

4. Click the End process button when asked for confirmation.

5. From the File menu of Task Manager, select New Task (Run…)

6. Type CMD.EXE, and click OK

7. In the Command Prompt window, type the commands one by one and press ENTER after each command:

CD /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local
DEL IconCache.db /a
EXIT

8. In Task Manager, click File, select New Task (Run…)

9. Type EXPLORER.EXE, and click OK

MS should fix this in any case

Proposed as answer by Ed in CT Thursday, February 7, 2013 1:20 PM

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 9:33 AM

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Spidersweb2, you noted that Explorer is restarted after the icon cache rebuild...

Have you tried just restarting Explorer without rebuilding the icon cache? I'm curious whether it recovers its refreshing behavior then?

Have you checked the "[ ] Launch folder windows in a separate process" box in Folder Options?

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 9:52 AM

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Spidersweb2, you noted that Explorer is restarted after the icon cache rebuild...

Have you tried just restarting Explorer without rebuilding the icon cache? I'm curious whether it recovers its refreshing behavior then?

Have you checked the "[ ] Launch folder windows in a separate process" box in Folder Options?

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

No, but I can try it.

Regarding folder options, not I did not check the "Launch folder..."

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 10:07 AM

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I was just thinking that if a Explorer restart helps make it work properly, maybe when the "Launch in separate process" option is set it's a bit like restarting Explorer every time you open a new Explorer window.

I always keep that option checked, and I usually start a new Explorer window, do a few things and close it. The important thing is that I'm not seeing the refresh problem here. It's no certainty that these two are related, but I am trying to get to the bottom of why I shouldn't be seeing the refresh issues that a lot of other people do run into.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 10:50 AM

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I found the issue guys.

****Delete any network location *shortcuts* on your desktop and in any folders you may have as well.****

This took me about 20 minutes of deduction after I initially created these network shortcuts and found out that auto-refreshing turned off. This may not be the "solution" but obviously it's a better workaround than "don't use your desktop for any file activity at all." More importantly, it's the cause of the issue (for me at least.)

Auto-refreshing turns back on after you've deleted these particular shortcuts.

Edited by Dessert Storm of Chocolate Saturday, January 28, 2012 1:08 PM OCD.

Saturday, January 28, 2012 1:03 PM

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I found the issue guys.

****Delete any network location *shortcuts* on your desktop and in any folders you may have as well.****

This took me about 20 minutes of deduction after I initially created these network shortcuts and found out that auto-refreshing turned off. This may not be the "solution" but obviously it's a better workaround than "don't use your desktop for any file activity at all." More importantly, it's the cause of the issue (for me at least.)

Auto-refreshing turns back on after you've deleted these particular shortcuts.

Nice try and I am sincerely glad that people are trying. I signed up for this site and a windows live account just to follow the progress, if any, of what I consider to be a real pain -- and there doesn't seem to be a fix. Or an answer from Microsoft, which is frustrating at best. If they don't have an answer, well, they should say that. If they're working on a solution, they should say that as well. If it turns out they don't think there will be a solution, they should admit that is the situation. As for your solution my friend, I am glad this seems to have worked for you. I don't have any network locations on my desktop or in folders and am dealing with a fresh install. I searched to be certain such network shortcuts didn't slip by with the usual bloat -- nothing there -- and the horror continues. Thanks for the try. I think everyone should hammer Microsoft as much as possible, or do what others have done, which is leave the real work to XP. Bon Chance.

Saturday, January 28, 2012 1:44 PM

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I just posted this remark to Microsoft's Forum Success Survey, for what it's worth.

"If anyone is really interested, you will find my answer, and my comment, here: THIS PAGE -- which I think somebody at Microsoft should read. The buggy issue so many are discussing seems to have been avoided by your corporate personnel, and that is just sad and speaks of corporate irresponsibility. I, for one, as a fan and a stockholder, would prefer not to believe this." -- JJADurbin, J.D.

Keep up the fire you guys, your efforts are appreciated.

Saturday, January 28, 2012 1:57 PM

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...am dealing with a fresh install....

You already have issues from a "fresh" install?? That implies to me that component "windows update" software might be the issue - namely perhaps "Microsoft Sync Framework" as that is looking like a common install around here. Some of the "auto-refreshing" behaviors are still "off" apparently on my desktop - for example if I download a file from firefox or rssowl (my default download folder is the desktop), I still need to manually refresh to see the ".part" file show up, and then refresh again to see the build file after it has downloaded. However, I know at one point in time this didn't need a manual refresh from me in order to see the updated file. I ran the steps posted by Noel at the top to reproduce the "display update problem" - and it appears to have worked "right."

Edited by Dessert Storm of Chocolate Saturday, January 28, 2012 2:54 PM

Saturday, January 28, 2012 2:50 PM

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Here's what I think we understand about this issue so far (correct me if you feel I'm wrong):

"The problem(s)" could be one or several different issues, at least some of which can be reproduced on demand.
At least some of "the problem(s)" can be reproduced on an absolutely virgin Windows 7 installation without any updates.
"The problem(s)" seem lessened by system tuning and disabling of features that use resources.
"The problem(s)" seem lessened by working on the hard drive and avoiding using Libraries and other Explorer "abstractions".
"The problem(s)" seem lessened on fast systems with fast disks.
"The problem(s)" seem lessened, but NOT eliminated, in Windows 8 Developer Preview as compared to Windows 7.
"The problem(s)" seem worsened by adding things, such as shortcuts pointing to network resources, that slow things down.
"The problem(s)" seem to be cumulative, i.e., once an Explorer session has had a problem it seems to have even more.

In my opinion the problem(s) must be rooted in a timing issue with event processing in the basic design of Explorer.

Unfortunately, so far it seems that Microsoft is unwilling to rewrite the pertinent parts of Explorer to correct these problems. I suspect that means the problem is at the very heart of Explorer's implementation.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Saturday, January 28, 2012 6:00 PM

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Windows XP

Windows8 (Developer Preview)

The same thing happens with Windows7 and Vista.

Edited by ﾠﾠﾠ Saturday, January 28, 2012 8:44 PM ban me for saying so

Saturday, January 28, 2012 7:53 PM

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Thank you, Mister Three-Box, for nicely illustrating that one of the problems being discussed is still an issue in Windows 8.

What's happens on your system when you do the same sequence of operations, but instead of opening Max Redbox as a "root" level abstraction in Windows Explorer, you open it by navigating to C:\Users\YourUsername instead?

Assuming it works properly, as it does for me, do you see a downside to opening the user folder that way, vs. the way you're opening it?

By the way, what you've shown above is a nice presentation. How are you preparing your GIFs? Is it labor-intensive? Have you considered using Camtasia to capture videos from your desktop? I found that fairly straightforward.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Edited by Noel Carboni Saturday, January 28, 2012 10:40 PM Added link to Camtasia video

Saturday, January 28, 2012 10:20 PM

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Spidersweb2, you noted that Explorer is restarted after the icon cache rebuild...

Have you tried just restarting Explorer without rebuilding the icon cache?

yes I tried it few minutes ago.... just restarting (kill it, then launch again) the "explorer.exe" process makes it work

Monday, January 30, 2012 11:16 AM

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just restarting (kill it, then launch again) the "explorer.exe" process makes it work

In that case, then, checking the "[ ] Launch folder windows in a separate process" box may help you, as with that setting each new window starts in its own fresh process. I'll be interested to hear that, with that setting if you see the problem just closing the Explorer window and opening a new one works around it.

In many cases people can work around Explorer problems and get more predictable results just by learning to use it in the ways that don't trigger its quirks.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Monday, January 30, 2012 9:13 PM

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Hi Noel (primarily), and Others,

Is it possible, that the refresh issues being discussed in this thread, are related to the many empty folders left behind, whenever I move large numbers of folders (many levels deep) around my drives? I am running Win 7 Ult. x64.

I seem to recall having this problem years ago with Vista, but then one day I solved it (can't remember how), and now it's back.

Thanks so much, for your generosity to the community (and all windows users the world over) on this one btw.

~p

humpty dumpty is sleepy

Wednesday, February 1, 2012 4:13 AM

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Paul, did you try either of the simple experiments in the animations above?

These problems have been for a decade.

This thread is marked Answered. What a farce.

Edited by ﾠﾠﾠ Wednesday, February 1, 2012 4:36 AM isnt that the truth

Wednesday, February 1, 2012 4:24 AM

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Is it possible, that the refresh issues being discussed in this thread, are related to the many empty folders left behind, whenever I move large numbers of folders (many levels deep) around my drives? I am running Win 7 Ult. x64.

That sounds a bit like what is describing in his animated GIFs above, which show "ghosts" of folders being left behind.

Paul, when you're doing your large moves, are you working right on the hard drive - i.e., rooted on C: or D: or whatever and having navigated into a subfolder - and NOT using a Library or root username abstraction? If not, please try working on just bona fide hard drive folders. As I've shown above in my .mp4 screen captures, avoiding the abstractions and sticking to using real, actual hard drive folders seems to make Explorer work right in cases shown to consistently fail otherwise.

This thread is marked Answered. What a farce.

Edited by ﾠﾠﾠ 32 minutes ago isnt that the truth

, the only possible "answer" we users can hope for, given the reality that Microsoft isn't falling all over themselves to make it better, is to try to find a way to work around the problems. You've been around here long enough to know that real fixes aren't forthcoming.

Folks who refuse to try to learn to work around problems often become so frustrated that they might call others' attempts to understand and work around the problems "a farce". But hey, thanks anyway for all your contributions. :)

And who knows, maybe Microsoft is going to turn over a new leaf: They've just announced that in the beta for Windows 8 they'll have fixed another different ("folders jump out of the way") issue in Windows Explorer. Will they fix all the manifestations of that one? I wouldn't want to bet on it. But think of the gravity of this... They've actually acknowledged that Explorer might not be perfect, and that they're still willing to work on it. I almost fell out of my chair.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Edited by Noel Carboni Wednesday, February 1, 2012 5:39 AM removed some errant HTML

Wednesday, February 1, 2012 5:36 AM

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It's a little known secret, but there is actually a manual Refresh button available in XP Explorer.

I'm surprised to discover it has been there for a decade.

Please accept my sincere apology for my earlier cynical remark. You most certainly misunderstood it. You see, I have had such marvelous success with suggestions you have made in this thread and earlier, and cannot begin to express my appreciation. Cannot even begin. It would be an understatement to say you are most deserving of the 11 votes Paul just cast for your selfless efforts.

The hours I spent composing those other many images and gifs, whose validity you initially disputed and now practically take credit for, and that single one remaining above which Paul just stepped over unnoticed as though it was an insignificant wad of gum on the pavement, that time and effort I spent here really only detracted from your crusade, Noel. Please accept my apology for having done that.

I am glad to see this thread is marked Answered. That means the problem is finally resolved. This subject is closed, by the author of the thread.

What a farce.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012 7:04 AM

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Honestly, I haven't seen much interest on your part in trying what I've suggested. I've put forth a lot of suggestions that I back by reproducible, documented success, and get a lot of positive feedback, but you just ignore that and post the same problems again and again - which is just heckling. Is there cause for pride in that somewhere? I just don't see it.

Case in point, you've shown that you can cause problems by using the root username abstraction in Explorer. I've shown that navigating to the C:\Users\Username folder on the hard drive and doing the exact same things doesn't trigger those same problems, and WHERE'S THE DOWNSIDE? We went around this block several times. Why does it take you more than about half a second to realize you need to abandon trying to use the root username abstraction and just use hard disk folders in Explorer to get good results? Same thing with Libraries and Favorites, and anything else they added since XP. Poor implementation of bad ideas.

Just use Explorer on real folders on the disk and life gets better in a hurry.

But hey, if you get pleasure out of stumbling over the same basic Windows bugs again and again and saying "see? SEE?!?", who am I to try to alter your course? Knock yourself out. Just don't expect to be appreciated for it.

You may believe you're good at finding problems, but frankly your documentation leaves something to be desired - people ask you directly how you did something, and you won't provide them with even simple steps. Work on that and you could possibly become a decent software tester.

Do you want to know WHY people don't acknowledge your contributions, such as your masterpiece of GIF animation above? Because your work is simply unhelpful to them. Big whoop, you figured out how to reproduce a problem. Nobody else wants to reproduce the problem, they want to NOT reproduce the problem. Help them figure out how to do THAT you'll get yourself noticed.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Wednesday, February 1, 2012 8:53 AM

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"...you'll get yourself noticed."

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Some people are preoccupied with that.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012 10:00 AM

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"...you'll get yourself noticed."

responded:

Some people are preoccupied with that.

LOL. And yet all can see it is you crying about how people treat you like an "insignificant wad on the pavement" (your words). I'm one of only about three people who has ever given you any respect here (I have always given you credit where credit was due - note my mention of your alter ego "Ed Nahuey" in the OP). Be thankful for that - the way you act you don't deserve recognition.

Now how about just going and doing something else and allowing this thread to get back on track again, so adults who want to make things better can continue talk about ways to work around these serious Windows issues. Thanks.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Wednesday, February 1, 2012 2:44 PM

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Here is the faulty refresh behavior (I had posted) that your Opening Post of this thread denies seeing.

Your animation includes that denial in large red print.

Why did you do that, and leave it standing?

You have since admitted seeing this problem intermittently with fresh installs of both Windows 7 and 8.

Why did you mark this subject Answered?

Wednesday, February 1, 2012 6:01 PM

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I've discovered the problem of the files not refreshing happens when the the files are NOT in alphabetical order.

In other words, the problem DOES NOT happen when you sort in reverse alphabetical order.

Still bugs me constantly, though, and it's really too bad. This is one of the most basic functions of a computer.

No wonder Apple is the biggest company now. Their stuff "just works." Microsoft has a lot of lessons to learn still, clearly.

Edited by ericshawn Friday, February 3, 2012 2:51 AM
Proposed as answer by riarda Monday, November 5, 2012 9:37 AM

Friday, February 3, 2012 2:51 AM

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Ericshawn, that's an interesting observation; thanks for the info. Though, if it turned out to be a solid workaround, honestly I don't think I would be willing to work all the time with files sorted in reverse order. Probably others wouldn't either.

Are you able to routinely reproduce the problem, then routinely not see it happen with reverse sorting?

Since it has become clear that the problem is intermittent, and based on unknown factors, it seems jumping to conclusions about when it does and doesn't happen is all too easy to do.

If you can reproduce it at will, does it differ depending on where you are working (e.g., in a hard drive folder rooted on a drive letter, or in one of the Libraries or abstractions)? Does it happen in a fresh Explorer session or just a stale one?

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Friday, February 3, 2012 1:43 PM

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Thanks, Noel.

Yes, I can reproduce the problem time and time again, absolutely at will.

It happens twice every day, in fact, when I download and back up my server databases.

I'll use the Ctrl + x and Ctrl + v (cut and paste) keyboard shortbuts on the files (fairly large, over 400 mb), moving them from folder to folder, then my last operation is to drag the most recent file showing in the explorer list into a now-empty folder... and when done, the file still shows right where I dragged it from.

Looking in the recipient folder, I do find it in there, and I must right click refresh the main window to see the updated list without the file I dragged out.

But as previously mentioned, if I sort in reverse alphabetical order before the cutting and pasting operations, it doesn't happen. When that's the only thing I do differently, it doesn't occur.

I agree with you, that still classifies as "intermittent" because there needs to be a more common thread among those complaining of the problem in order to solve it. And I also agree that my workaround isn't generally acceptable to others... but I'm living with it. :)

To answer your question, the word Library does appear in the path, though I don't recall explicitly using a Library feature to create the shortcut to the directory (which I keep on my desktop).

I'm going to try to create a more direct link to the folder and try not using Libraries. I'll see if that helps.

Friday, February 3, 2012 5:19 PM

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Just wanted to report that I've used the non-Library version of the link to the directory for a while now and the problem is gone.

I'm convinced the problem lies within Libraries.

I think Libraries are pretty much problematic.

I know they fail to list all files of a type, at least for me, so I had stopped explicitly using Libraries, deciding they were buggy, right when Win 7 came out.

I know you know, based on your thread Noel, that others report problems with Windows 7 Libraries as well: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproui/thread/040e255b-b2e5-4b3b-94e6-743fa0e9cae1/

Best,

Eric

Sunday, February 5, 2012 3:46 AM

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That's good feedback; thank you Eric. It mirrors my experience.

Unfortunately, I don't think it's a go/no-go thing just tied to Libraries... I've started to really believe it must have to do with timing, and if certain things don't get done in a certain amount of time, the refresh goes bad. Abstractions, such as Libraries, slow things down and add time to the gathering of the data, and thus cause the problem to be seen, while direct disk access is simpler and quicker.

I even had one case where the problem that Ed Nahuey found could be duplicated every time with the cache setting I mention at the top of this thread set one way, and it would not happen with it set the other way. I tested it back and forth about a dozen times, and the problem definitely followed the setting. It's why I mentioned that cache setting.

For the refresh problem to be tied to so many different things, it really has to be a very indirect coupling.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Sunday, February 5, 2012 4:19 AM

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This worked perfectly for me (Win7 Pro 64 SP1).

Thanks a lot for this!

Sunday, February 5, 2012 1:48 PM

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Hi Nicovo, that's good news.

It's not completely clear which "this" in the thread above you're referring to that helped you. Could you please be more specific? Thanks.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Sunday, February 5, 2012 3:01 PM

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ericshawn, I'm pretty sure I agree with you 100% that the problem is in accessing the files through the Libraries.

It seems that I'm a very late arrival to this party, so please pardon me if what I'm about to contribute is a duplication of effort. The problem just started occurring for me recently.

I'm in the same boat as everyone else who is affected by the topic of this thread. Namely, when I open Windows Explorer and navigate through Libraries ... Documents to get to "My Documents", a file action (let's say a deletion of a file) isn't automatically reflected and requires that pesky F5 update. If I navigate DIRECTLY to c:\users\myname\my documents\whatever it works fine.

Here's what I've figured out that works for me. Maybe it will help someone else.

1. Created a new shortcut to c:\users\myname\my documents
2. Placed that shortcut in c:\Users\myname\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
3. Assigned the F9 key as a shortcut key for that shortcut

It took me a few days to retrain myself to use F9 instead of Windows-E to launch Explorer. I finally put a green sticky dot on the F9 key and that seemed to help.

This isn't a perfect solution by any means. But at least it gets me to my My Documents quickly, and file actions are reflected properly once I get there.

As Neil has pointed out, it seems that there may be multiple contributing factors, and perhaps there is no single workaround. But if this shortcut helps anyone else, I'm happy to have contributed.

Mark

Tuesday, February 7, 2012 9:59 PM

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I notice that my Administrator account does not have the problem. My Mark Thompson account does. The only apparent difference is the space in the user name. (Both accounts are administrators of the PC.) So I wonder - could the space in the user name could be causing a problem?

To test this, I set up two new users: TestUser and Test User. Unfortunately, neither account exhibits the problem behavior.

Rats. Thought I might be on to something there.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 1:23 PM

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Thanks for your responses, and especially for checking out different theories, guys.

Unfortunately, this is just not one of those simple cause and effect problems, or threads wouldn't have lived on for the entire life of Windows with people seeking remedies.

Fortunately, if one is willing to bend a bit to work around or avoid its pitfalls, Windows 7 CAN be a substantially solid, useful desktop OS. I've personally reached a good balance, and I see that some of you are discovering ways to avoid the problems as well (e.g., by just not using Libraries).

For what it's worth, a while back I applied registry tweaks to remove Libraries from even appearing in my Explorer Navigation Pane, and I've been running that way for several years now doing everything in real hard drive folders, and I just don't see this refresh issue in my day to day work, nor many of the related issues that have been described above.

I hope that you can achieve a good balance and get as much value as possible from Windows 7 as well.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 4:49 PM

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Hello Again Noel,

Please accept my appologies for not being prompt in replies, I have a very erratic schedule lately. I have just a few moments now though, and wasnt to give you a quick update.

The impolite person whose comments were deleted pointed out that I provided you multiple votes as helpful. That was because your attitude is optimistic, positive, and courteous, but even moreso because your comments provide insight and potential solutions (eg., they are helpful). I stand by those votes and I can justify every one if asked to.

Now, you asked an extended question, as follows (my annotations added in parenthetical marks):

"Paul, when you're doing your large moves, (Q1.) are you working right on the hard drive - i.e., (Q1.a.) rooted on C: or D: or whatever and having (Q1.b.) navigated into a subfolder - and (Q1.c) NOT using a Library or root username abstraction? If not, please (Q1.d.) try working on just bona fide hard drive folders. As I've shown above in my .mp4 screen captures, avoiding the abstractions and sticking to using real, actual hard drive folders seems to make Explorer work right in cases shown to consistently fail otherwis"

(A.1) I became acutely aware of the 'Special Folders' that Windows strongly encourages customers to use, when I first began tweaking Windows NT 3.5, and have to this very day, always avoided them like a mysterious and powerful enemy.

(A.1.a) No, I very rarely work on the C drive, however, when forced to, I always attempt to stay at the root level. Although I have learned the hard way not to change default Junction Point behavior and that the user account I execute new process threads under also brings with it a forced (potentially malbehaved) different set of environment variables, I do on occasion use very simple symbolic links for third party application redirection.

(Q.2) "Paul, did you try either of the simple experiments in the animations above?"

(A.2) Yes, the behavior on my PC is exactly as you demo (when DACL policies don't traverse 'special folders', there are no ghost folders that remain, after a folder copy, move, or paste operation).

Additional Remarks (AR):

(AR.1) I too have found 'work-arounds' for situations where I have scripted or automated large copy/move operations. For example, using cut/paste, instead of move, or else using additional (post-hoc) apps that hunt down and delete empty folders.

(AR.2) However, the empty folders (I think you have identified them as 'ghost' folders?), that I find left behind, often occur even when moving only a handful of files/folders.

(AR.3) If I can find the time to, I can create a short screen cast for you to demo this, if you still want.

(AR.4) I feel sure that in my case, the erratic behavior is due to something I have changed or installed. I recognize your keen insight about demonstrating the problem on a fresh brand new OS install. In my case, it's more a matter of "gee, I have 200 app's installed, and have modified half the registry, so which one of these reversible tweak is the most likely culprit?".

humpty dumpty is sleepy

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 6:50 PM

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Thank you, Paul.

It's difficult to say what could be triggering the problem behavior on your system, especially if you don't have a point in time where you can say "it worked before then and now it doesn't".

One thing comes to mind: Review everything you have running on your system, especially shell extensions, via these tools. I've found them invaluable for disabling things not really needed - and almost everything one installs nowadays puts in components that aren't needed.

Autoruns

ShellExView

Good luck!

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 11:47 PM

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Quick question -

Has anyone contacted Microsoft support and submitted an official service request?

Thursday, February 9, 2012 3:05 PM

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I have contacted them via their problem submission tool, but if you know of other ways, by all means do so! I can see how they might ignore forum threads, and I have even heard they're pretty aggressive about closing open problem reports, so it can't hurt to let them know multiple times!

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Thursday, February 9, 2012 3:25 PM

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After encountering this problem on my computer I went looking for answers and came across this forum hoping to find a quick fix. :(

I have nothing to contribute...accept that I never had any problems until I downloaded Google Chrome and started going "paperless" with Google Docs. Within a couple of uploads I had my problem.

1st it started with "unspecified files" in my Documents followed by no automatic refreshing within my files.

I should say also that it could have started with "softi to pdf" since I also used that at the exact same time to help with going paperless.

Thanks for trying to help us...maybe this info will fit into your puzzle somewhere :)

Thursday, February 9, 2012 5:32 PM

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Thanks for the input, L.marlene. Everything helps.

It's possible that what you're seeing is because of the change of timing of how Explorer runs on your system due to the additional software being installed and running.

I don't know how technically proficient you are about things running on your PC, but the advice I gave Paul, above, applies: Installing that software may have resulted in things being run in the background or as shell extensions that use your computer resources and reduce the speed at which things get done. Explorer seems to be touchy about how quickly it can complete its operations.

It's never a bad idea to review all of what you have running on your computer and consider disabling things you don't really need. But you have to be very methodical and very careful. It's always good to have a fresh System Image backup, recovery disc, and make restore points when experimenting.

If you DO decide to experiment, keep in mind this particular problem is intermittent, and particularly elusive. Sometimes you see it, sometimes you don't, so don't be quick to judge whether a system change has made Explorer work right or wrong.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Thursday, February 9, 2012 6:07 PM

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Hi L.marlene,

Thank you for taking the time to try and help. I want to express my agreement here with Noel about what he just wrote back to you, as I agree completely it. In fact, Noel and others have posted some very helpful advise to work around this problem, so if you go back and try to read the full thread, from the beginning. That can also help provide insight to how other issues may masquerade as close approximates to this particular one, which may indeed also be, somewhat diffuse in terms of a wide scope initially observed symptoms.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:

Go back to Noel's posts and review his checklist. It's a compromise, but the least time-consuming solution right now.
SysInternals provide some excellent tools (which are totally free for personal use) that can be used in cooperation with the free Windows Performance Monitor to perform a proper investigation of the problem (monitoring which threads are executing which operations, and in what order, and logging it). Programmers do this but are able to set 'stop points' along the way. If you wanted to download a checked version of the OS, then you could actually do something similar. However, that is a very exhaustive, detailed, and time-consuming task.
A better alternative than the above, is to do what Noel is talking about. Just uninstall/de-activate as many items as you can, one at a time, and see if the problem persists. But you may have to reboot between each change you make, to be sure that the observations are valid. Check out this thread here. Noel may disagree, but I also think that some kind of COM object, or shell handler, could be the problem, particularly in my case, since I avoid junction points, symbolic links, and special folders already. If you decide to pursue that route, try using ShellExView from NirSoft, who provides lots of very good tools for free, for exactly this kind of troubleshooting.
If the problem is driving you nuts, and you don't want to waste time investigating it, or working around it, and you are sure you are not using any 'special folders' or libraries (that you ALREADY, are doing solution alternative number 1 above), but it's not good enough to satisfy you, just reformat/reinstall the OS, but test folder behavior between each app install, as you try to get back up to your full operating status (with all apps installed and productivity maxed out).

Best Regards,
Paul

Edited by PaulRichardsonDOTnet Friday, February 10, 2012 3:32 AM

Friday, February 10, 2012 3:07 AM

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Hi Noel,

It seems to me that there are 3 completely unrelated possible sets of issues that cause similar symptoms. Maybe you can shed some light on this, or help me understand if I'm confused.

I thought I read in one of these threads something about deleted and recreating the icon cache (see batch script below). How on could that possibly be related to this??
You are interested in a timing issue. Are you thinking that factors could be the depth of the folders and the time needed for policies to be processed, ACL (or Windows Cert Store, X509) certificates/tokens authenticated? Exactly where in the timing of things, could a wrench have fallen?
Do you think that looking for a shell hook as the culprit is a lost cause, if I'm NOT having problems with 'slow' response of explorer, but I do occassionally have folders linger, when workin on the 5 or 6 USB External Drives that I have (each a Terabyte or more) all connected through a powered hub, continuously? I've got literally HUNDREDS of applications installed on this crazy PC I'm working on.

Best Regards,
Paul

@echo off
cls
echo The Explorer process must be killed to delete the Icon DB. 
echo Please SAVE ALL OPEN WORK before continuing
pause
taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F 
echo Attempting to delete Icon DB...
If exist %userprofile%\AppData\Local\IconCache.db goto delID
echo Previous Icon DB not found...trying to build a new one
goto :main

:delID
cd /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local
del IconCache.db /a
pause
echo Icon DB has been successfully deleted
goto main

:main
echo Windows 7 must be restarted to rebuild the Icon DB. 
echo Restart now? (Y/N):
set /p choice=
If %choice% == y goto end
echo Restart aborted...please close this window 
explorer.exe

:end
shutdown /r /t 0
exit

Edited by PaulRichardsonDOTnet Friday, February 10, 2012 3:33 AM

Friday, February 10, 2012 3:27 AM

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1. I thought I read in one of these threads something about deleted and recreating the icon cache (see batch script below). How on could that possibly be related to this??

I believe there has been a lot of conjecture and shots in the dark, and maybe even some intentional misinformation posted on the subject. Personally I don't think icon cache issues are likely related - BUT - it's not hard to see how anything Explorer accesses in the process of displaying a folder could be involved so I wouldn't rule it out. Maybe a large icon database just takes longer to access than a fresh, small one...

2. You are interested in a timing issue. Are you thinking that factors could be the depth of the folders and the time needed for policies to be processed, ACL (or Windows Cert Store, X509) certificates/tokens authenticated? Exactly where in the timing of things, could a wrench have fallen?

All I know is that I've seen the setting I mentioned at the top of this thread make a direct difference in reproducibility of one of the problems (the test1/2/3 folder cut/paste thing that Ed Nahuey turned up, and which I animated). Set to the lower performance setting the problem clearly happened, and set the other way it didn't - 10 out of 10 times. That was what convinced me timing or sequencing of events is involved.

Add to that the fact that when it works properly Explorer updates the display with all the proper info, as in the animation - the display updates immediately. When it fails to update properly, there's a noticeable (fraction of a second) delay. The basic observation is "fast = works, slow = fails".

The way Windows apps work is by processing events received in an event processing loop. It's not hard to see how there could be a dependence on the ordering of events (though there's not generally supposed to be). So let's say, as a hypothesis, that the Explorer programmers anticipate the receipt of event A, then B, in that order. When A is received first, then B, the display is updated properly. But if something happening causes the delay of event A so that it follows B, then something important isn't available when it's needed by event B.

Unfortunately I don't have any more detail to this theory beyond that...

You might think a scientific approach to discovering the difference could involve capturing a complete event trace from a session in which it works and comparing it to one that doesn't. Sounds like a great idea, but the practical reality is that there will be tens or even hundreds of thousands of events arriving in who knows what order, and the key difference will be hidden in the crowd of unimportant differences between the test sessions. Without intimate knowledge of the code itself, and some appropriate event filtering enabled, it's just not going to be productive to capture a giant list of events.

3. Do you think that looking for a shell hook as the culprit is a lost cause, if I'm NOT having problems with 'slow' response of explorer, but I do occassionally have folders linger, when workin on the 5 or 6 USB External Drives that I have (each a Terabyte or more) all connected through a powered hub, continuously? I've got literally HUNDREDS of applications installed on this crazy PC I'm working on.

Heh, all I can say is that one could only know whether something is a lost cause if one knows what the problem is.

Shell Extensions may capture events and generate additional events. ClassicShell's ClassicExplorer component is a good example... Note that there's a "Fix Folder Scrolling Bug" setting in which the author captures certain events in certain sequence and alters the sequence to fix a navigation pane bug. The source code is available and I've been through it, but I'm not nearly at the level of familiarity with Explorer's event sequences that the author apparently has reached.

My point is that Explorer DOES have problems in its event handling - one of which has been discovered and worked around by 3rd party software.

Given all we've seen it may just not be possible for Explorer to update its display properly in some configurations on some systems. I haven't seen the problem on my external MyBook drive, but then I don't work directly on it very much since it's primarily a backup drive - certainly I don't do what you do with yours. And beyond using things differently, there's another thread around here where someone's reporting specific problems with external USB drives corrupting data, which I can't reproduce. Clearly details matter - what brand drive, what drivers service it, how fast the processors, how big the cache, etc.

At this point, since we don't have access to Explorer's source code, all we can do is try stuff, as well as listing combinations of software, hardware, and settings that appear to work well. This is one of the reasons I put together my book - to document the setup I use, and which delivers good reliability and minimization of known problems, so I can reproduce the setup on my own new systems.

By the way, I note that your script above involves a reboot. I wonder how many times just rebooting the system without making ANY changes might clear the problem - for a while. Consider that at least some folks report good results from the "Open Folder Windows In Separate Process" setting - which makes it more likely that a new Explorer process will be opened from time to time.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Edited by Noel Carboni Friday, February 10, 2012 5:22 AM Clarified wording

Friday, February 10, 2012 5:17 AM

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Just wanted to add myself to the list of affected by this issue. I haven’t read this "ridiculously long" discussion in full, but I understand there is no quick and easy fix.

I mostly work with network files and very rarely use libraries but only experience this issue on Desktop. It happens once or twice a week, so it hasn’t really been annoying enough to justify spending any significant amount of time investigating. Obviously any such investigation would be pretty difficult as I have no idea how to reproduce it.

One thing which definitely fixes the problem for me (until it appears next time) is restarting explorer.exe. I even created a little .bat file on my desktop:
taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F
explorer.exe
I simply double click it when issue occurs and problem solved (until next time). This is acceptable to me because it doesn’t happen very often.

I never seen this problem on my home Windows 7 PCs. Could it be that somethinkg in corporate environments causes it (domain, mapped network drives, redirected folders, etc)?

Noel, I can see you put same significant work trying to resolve this. If you need any help reproducing the problem or testing potential fixes let me know.

www.mysysadmintips.com

Edited by qwerty88 Friday, February 10, 2012 3:47 PM Formatting

Friday, February 10, 2012 3:43 PM

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Qwerty88, I have heard that locking the desktop and logging back in can have the same effect. I guess that restarts Explorer as well.

Since you've found restarting Explorer to help, have you tried the [ ] Launch Folder Windows in a Separate Process setting of Folder Options? I know the "main" Explorer instance is the one that manages the desktop itself, but I wonder if doing file activities in separate processes could offload the main instance and prolong the amount of time you have where the desktop works properly...

You make a good point here, and one that's worth re-emphasizing:

There seems to be some component of this issue that's cumulative - that is to say under some conditions Explorer will work properly for a while, then stop working. It's not clear if this is because a freshly-started process might just have all its resources well-organized (e.g,. fragmentation could slow things down after a while, causing a timing-based failure to show up after using Explorer for a certain amount of time).

Personally, I rarely use my desktop for file activities... Yes, I know Microsoft (and Apple) seem to encourage you to do so. I do keep a bunch of shortcuts on the desktop for starting things, but I always use C:\TEMP for temporary storage of files. I've gotten into this habit over a long period of time, dating back to DOS days, and it's very natural to do. Of course, essentially not using the desktop for ongoing work means that one does not encounter problems with refreshing the desktop. The few and far between desktop changes I DO do (e.g., creating a new shortcut or removing an old one) seem to work fine, long-term.

I appreciate your (and everyone's) willingness to help try to narrow this down. It seems so far that a combination of changing one's work habits to avoid problem areas and keeping one's system lean and quick seems to help most.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Friday, February 10, 2012 3:55 PM

http://shammyowens.blogspot.com/2012/02/windows-2008-r2-shared-files-do-not.html

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I found the answer to my problem here

Deleting 2 registry keys fixed the problem for us.

Thursday, February 16, 2012 10:49 AM

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What registry sub-tree should those entries be found in? HKLM, HKCU, ...? And are they supposed to be keys or values?

I searched my registry (on my machine that doesn't experience this problem) and I don't have those values/keys anywhere.

Seems to me those must either be values that are default only on Windows Server 2008, or were set by policy changes set on (or pushed to) your machine(s) by a network administrator.

Thanks for the suggestion, though unfortunately it may not help a lot of Windows 7 users.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Thursday, February 16, 2012 2:57 PM

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Great illustration of a nasty gotcha in Windows, dersosnec aka Vapor Lock! Thanks!

Explorer appears to be recognizing that the Downloads folder is one of the user's personal folders, and is turning a perfectly usable folder path into an abstraction. Why would they do this? To "simplify" the use of Windows? Sheesh.

%#&@$ Explorer magic! Nobody needs it! It doesn't work right!

But it's a great clue - could it be there's a registry key somewhere that averts this particular kind of magic? I think this represents a new way to look at this problem. Thank you for that!

It's clear the subsequent update problem you're showing is happening because the folder is rooted in an abstraction (noting that VaporLock is at the root in the left Explorer window, not C:\).

This is clearly another manifestation of the same problem you have illustrated on prior occasions.

A reasonable workaround, assuming we don't discover a "stop the %#&@$ magic registry setting", is to avoid using such abstractions - e.g., by navigating into Downloads starting from C: and going through Users, the username, etc. Get in the habit of doing this - which isn't a big deal to do - and you'll find Explorer will work MUCH better. The slight loss of convenience is offset by being able to better trust what you see.

A wise man up somewhere up above said to work on actual folders rooted on your hard drive to avoid problems. This is a perfect example of why.

Thank you for so elegantly illustrating a gotcha to be avoided!

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Thursday, February 16, 2012 6:52 PM

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By the way, please try this and see if it helps avert the problem:

Change the target of the Downloads - Shortcut to this:

Explorer.exe C:\Users\VaporLock\Downloads

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Proposed as answer by Vapor LockBanned Saturday, February 18, 2012 7:48 AM
Unproposed as answer by Vapor LockBanned Saturday, February 18, 2012 7:48 AM

Thursday, February 16, 2012 6:59 PM

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They are HKLM and they are values. I have edited the post to reflect this.

These were set by a GPO to improve network performance, unfortunately we didn't realise the byproduct and we removed them.

It was worth a shot, hopefully it might help narrow down the search.....good luck guys

Thursday, February 16, 2012 9:10 PM

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Thanks. Interesting that it took longer to reproduce problems. My observation was that I didn't see the window coordination problems just by this one difference (using Computer as the root namespace).

It sounds as if the problem(s) can be characterized, given what we've learned in this thread so far, as:

Intermittent.
Less likely when using operations always rooted in the Computer namespace.
Timing-related.
Corruption appears to accumulate - ultimately to cause Explorer crashes.

Given these observations, and no discovery of a direct fix so far, do you think these "best practice" suggestions seem sound?

Use the Computer root namespace exclusively, i.e., make sure all your Explorer operations are on folders/files rooted on Computer in the Navigation pane, not on an abstraction such as your username (UsersFiles) or Libraries. This appears to reduce the probability of failure; when using the same root namespace multiple Explorer windows appear to coordinate better between themselves.
Set Explorer folder options to Launch folder windows in a separate process, and when you want to do Explorer operations start a fresh Explorer window. This both offloads the Explorer process running the desktop, enhancing long-term stability, and sees each new session of Explorer start with a fresh set of contiguous internal resources, some of which are not shared with other windows.
Optimize for high disk throughput, such as using good hardware, disabling indexing, using an unintrusive antivirus solution, choosing performance settings to make disk operations as fast as possible. These things could help avert timing-related problems, such as event ordering issues.

Did you try the "Launch in separate process" setting (#2 above) in addition to testing with Computer as the root namespace as you showed above? If not, could you please try it? You're very good at reproducing problems and I'm interested in whether you see that setting change the nature of the problems on your system.

I find that all together these things (and possibly others?) work to make it unlikely to see Explorer update problems and subsequent crashes.

I simply haven't run across Explorer display update problems (and certainly not crashes) in heavy daily computer use, in the more than 2 years I've been running Windows 7 on my main workstation. I've taken measures to reduce the namespaces shown in the Navigation pane (I only see Favorites, Computer, and Network), all my shortcuts open with the Navigation pane rooted on Computer, and I've applied a number of measures to maximize performance. It appears that no one of these things "fixes" the problem, but taken together they definitely help.

By the way I'm not sure I have followed your lead perfectly, Vapor Lock, but I just ran through doing what I think you're describing above a whole BUNCH of times (without closing the Explorer windows), using the same folder names you're showing, and I could not get it to fail on my Windows 7 host workstation. The windows remained coordinated and there were no crashes. Can you please be a little more specific (e.g., list steps) that you feel are most likely to reproduce the problem? I tried both cut/paste and drag/drop for moving the folders around, nesting them and unnesting them, literally for about 20 minutes. Please understand I'm not disputing that you have reproduced the problem - what you've shown clearly illustrates that you have.

Thanks.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Edited by Noel Carboni Saturday, February 18, 2012 4:02 PM corrected editor spacing problems

Saturday, February 18, 2012 3:59 PM

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Noel,

Thanks for your observations. However, number 3 under your 'best practice' does not prevent or even mitagate the issue. I have gone through the proposed steps so far. Top-notch hardware, streamlined OS, lightweight AV (or no AV) makes no difference in the frequency of this bug. I can reproduce the bug 100% of the time in my Libraries\Documents folder. Number 1 on your list is also not much of an option with so many programs 'defaulting' to your Documents folder for user data, some not even giving you the option to change the path on install. I have not tested number 2 yet but it looks like it will still require extra steps and windows to operate and, if it works, would be a clunky workaround at best.

(Note: This isn't a slight on you. You're actively working to fix the issue which is much appreciated)

Saturday, February 18, 2012 4:41 PM

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Thanks for your observations. However, number 3 under your 'best practice' does not prevent or even mitagate the issue.

Thanks for the feedback. I wrote that because in the very first post in this thread I suggested a disk caching change that I have personally observed to cause one of the update problems specifically to be reproducible / not reproducible. In that instance, I believe it pushed the timing slightly one way or the other, which mitigated the problem.

I have not tested number 2 yet but it looks like it will still require extra steps and windows to operate and, if it works, would be a clunky workaround at best.

Not really in all ways. In itself you see no difference on screen by changing that setting - Explorer windows open as they usually do, it's just that new processes start for each of them. Changing habits so as to open Explorer windows as needed, then closing them when done may be more or less difficult for some folks. I do it all the time, and on a modern computer the windows just open instantly, which makes things pretty smooth.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Edited by Noel Carboni Saturday, February 18, 2012 5:52 PM

Saturday, February 18, 2012 5:52 PM

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Thanks, Vapor Lock. I will indeed try it. Just to be sure, did you log off/on after making the #2 setting change? I think the main desktop Explorer instance has to be restarted for that setting to take effect.

That you can repro the problem while I can't says that something's somehow working right here, with my current user login, that's not working properly on your machine. It could be because of system performance, specific drivers installed, settings differences, or who knows what, but I can't shake the feeling that it could be because of a specific combination of settings / tweaks / installed software, and that once that combo is identified it could be applied to others' systems as well.

Do you have indexing enabled?

Interesting thought that it could be because of there being fewer files and folders... That doesn't seem likely, as I keep nothing at all in my Downloads folder; I generally avoid use the folders under my user profile (except for My Documents).

I'll let you know what I find with further testing. I have a number of virtual machines with various levels of performance and usability tweaking, and I have all the system changes I've done well-documented.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Edited by Noel Carboni Saturday, February 18, 2012 6:50 PM corrected typo, improved wording

Saturday, February 18, 2012 6:49 PM

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Update: I have been able to reproduce one part of the problem on my main workstation with a very specific sequence of operations in which I move the various folders into one another via drag and drop then use Control-Z to undo the operations.

The part of the problem I've reproduced, specifically, is that I can get the little triangular subfolder expansion controls to stop showing, even when a subfolder is present.

It's possible that this would lead ultimately to a crash - on the theory that the corruption is cumulative and things will get progressively worse once something goes wrong.

I'm trying to nail down the sequence now and capture a video. Stand by...

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Saturday, February 18, 2012 7:13 PM

http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/FolderExpansionIconDisappears.mp4

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Okay, here's a direct way to reproduce this particular problem, which isn't exactly a failure to refresh, but a failure to display one of the typical UI elements - the indicator that a subfolder can be expanded:

1. Create 3 subfolders of a folder - it doesn't matter where they are or what they are named.

2. Drag the third subfolder into the second, then drag the second into the first.

3. Now choose Edit - Undo (or press Control-Z) twice, so that the prior two moves are undone and the 3 subfolders are all at the same level again.

4. Again drag the third folder into the second, as in the first part of step 2 above. Note that the subfolder expansion triangle does not appear this time.

What we don't know is whether this causes some form of corruption that later manifests as further failures including failures to update or crashes, but it may be that this is what Vapor Lock has been seeing.

Here's a short video that illustrates the above:

This issue seems different from those of failure to coordinate operations between Explorer windows, and thus is quite possibly something different than the "Explorer Update Issue" of main discussion here, but given that it's SO simple to demonstrate, we can hope Microsoft will be able to address it. I plan to do the same test on a Windows 8 system, then (assuming it still fails) submit it as a bug.

I don't know how many different ways there are to reproduce this particular problem, but I personally haven't run into it before likely because:

I usually don't nest and un-nest subfolders much.
I start new Explorer windows whenever I need to do something, and I use the Launch folder windows in a separate process setting. Thus corruption doesn't accumulate.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Saturday, February 18, 2012 7:58 PM

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Thanks for the feedback. I wrote that because in the very first post in this thread I suggested a disk caching change that I have personally observed to cause one of the update problems specifically to be reproducible / not reproducible. In that instance, I believe it pushed the timing slightly one way or the other, which mitigated the problem.

I guess it varies by config. I tested the disk caching setting as well. After the change there was maybe a 30 mins window where I could not reproduce the issue. But then it started again 100%.

Not really in all ways. In itself you see no difference on screen by changing that setting - Explorer windows open as they usually do, it's just that new processes start for each of them. Changing habits so as to open Explorer windows as needed, then closing them when done may be more or less difficult for some folks. I do it all the time, and on a modern computer the windows just open instantly, which makes things pretty smooth.

Okay. I'll give it a try and report back.

Saturday, February 18, 2012 8:47 PM

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I can still reproduce the issue with the 'launch folder windows in a seperate process' setting checked.

Saturday, February 18, 2012 8:57 PM

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Alceryes, since you're able to reproduce the issue apparently on demand, can you please go into more detail just how you're doing so? Finding a process where things are consistenty reproducible is a good way to start on the road to getting them fixed.

Above you mentioned that "I can reproduce the bug 100% of the time in my Libraries\Documents folder"... Is this where you're seeing the problem, and if so, what if you start an Explorer window and navigate, under the Computer namespace root, to your C:\Users\Username\My Documents folder directly. Do you see the same problem then?

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Saturday, February 18, 2012 10:06 PM

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Noel,

Please go to ftp://ftp.alceryes.com/explorer_refresh_issue, to download a video demonstration of the issue in question.
UN - ftptemp
PW - downl0adMe

The video is 3.5GB's in size so it may take a bit to download. It will be available for the next couple of days.

Video commentary - I play a game where I keep rolling saves for different characters. I regularly backup these saves to other folders. I also regularly go in and delete the last 10 or so oldest saves (or all of them if I'm switching characters). When I highlight the save files and hit the delete key (and say yes to the prompt) only one of the files disappears. The other 'phantom files' are still there until I refresh the folder.

It gets even weirder...
After running through the steps in the video a couple dozen times the explorer refresh issue went away! I then tried for about 20 mins to reproduce the issue without success. I had some errands to run and now several hours (and a reboot) later the issue is back.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

Edited by Alceryes Tuesday, February 21, 2012 3:21 AM SS

Tuesday, February 21, 2012 3:00 AM

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I'd like to download your video, but I got an error, using the username and password you supplied. I tried with Explorer, Internet Explorer, and WebDrive. Here's the transcript from one of the attempts:

Connecting to site Alceryes
Connecting to ftp://ftp.alceryes.com
Connecting (AUTH SSL (SSL v3.0 or TLS 1.0)) to ftp://ftp.alceryes.com:21 ...
Resolving url ftp.alceryes.com to an IP address
Url resolved to IP address 68.192.183.154
Connecting to 68.192.183.154 on port 21
Connected successfully to the server on port 21

Unable to connect to server, error information below

Error: Failed to establish connection to server. (4509)
Operation: Connecting to server

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Edited by Noel Carboni Tuesday, February 21, 2012 6:34 PM

Tuesday, February 21, 2012 6:31 PM

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I am able to login and download fine from a couple different sites using the UN and PW I supplied.

Make sure 'use passive FTP' is unchecked in IE options. Also hit it from Explorer - easier to navigate than IE. No worries on time frame. It will stay up until you are able to download it.

Edited by Alceryes Tuesday, February 21, 2012 8:02 PM SS

Tuesday, February 21, 2012 7:20 PM

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That (passive FTP setting) was it - thanks. It's downloading now... It'll be a while before it's done. I have a good fiber internet connection, but 3.6 GB is pretty large any way you look at it. In the future you might consider compressing your video using MP4 to reduce the size significantly.

I'll let you know when it's done and I've had a look at it.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Tuesday, February 21, 2012 8:09 PM

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Hi again, Alceryes. The whole file downloaded in a little over an hour, but unfortunately I get an error when trying to play it, in Windows Media Player, Quicktime, Windows Media Center, and IrfanView. How did you record it?

I'll try to download it again on the chance that it was corrupted during download, but I can't recall the last time I had that happen.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 12:33 AM

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I actually had windows media player crash when playing it as well (after about ¼ of the way through the clip). I use SMPlayer for most things was able to play the video in it's entierty with that. See if you can play it in SMPlayer. If we continue to have probs playing/downloading I'll see about compression.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 4:34 AM

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Yep, I can reproduce that crash. Thank you for the steps, Vapor Lock.

In my case the Explorer window went "ghost" and offered me the option of debugging with Visual Studio, which I did. The error (on Windows 7 Ultimate x64) is the following:

Unhandled exception at 0x000007fefe540da7 in explorer.exe: 0xC000041D: An unhandled exception was encountered during a user callback.

41D hex is 1053 decimal. Consider this excerpt from WinError.h:

//
// MessageId: ERROR_SERVICE_REQUEST_TIMEOUT
//
// MessageText:
//
// The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.
//
#define ERROR_SERVICE_REQUEST_TIMEOUT 1053L

Interestingly, performing the exact same steps in sequence using drag and drop does not net the same failure. Perhaps to add to the above list of best Windows 7 practices it might be wise to: Avoid using Cut/Paste for moving folders around.

It's clear that exactly how one chooses to do certain operations can greatly influence the outcome. Clearly not every method of moving folders around is equivalent.

Notably I could NOT reproduce the problem using the above steps (using Cut/Paste) in Windows 8 DP.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 7:45 PM

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Alceryes, I'm sorry to say that my second try at downloading your .avi file failed during download (right near the end, actually). Perhaps it would be good if you could try to compress it. Thanks.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 7:47 PM

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Found a possible work-around.

After reading the mind-numbing posts in this and many other threads on this problem, several solution attempts failing to fix the problem, I had a hunch that Microsoft's insipid "My Documents" was somehow to blame. So cut-pasted my entire file tree (rooted there) over to good old C:\.

Problem Solved.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 10:42 PM

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Noel,

I've compressed the video. It should be a little easier to handle.
Let me know if you are able to download it.

Thursday, February 23, 2012 1:13 AM

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Considering this revelation, maybe you'll want to revise this recent advice of yours.

Not in the slightest. I didn't suggest cut/paste at all in that post - cut/paste has no applicability there. Read carefully - that thread was all about DELETING things, and I stand by my advice. If you can't be sure of what you see highlighted, you can certainly be sure of what you clicked-on.

Regarding this thread, to me dragging and dropping seems to be the most straightforward way to MOVE things around. And I guess it must have been better tested.

While I wholeheartedly agree that one should be able to choose freely from the various ways to do things in order to get things done without worry that one way will cause trouble while another breaks things, the reality is that this is not the case, and it can't hurt to develop habits that minimize the probability of errors. That's just common sense.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Thursday, February 23, 2012 2:16 AM

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Notably, Derosnec can reproduce the problem using steps like above (using Cut/Paste) in Windows 8 DP.

I invite your alter ego to try again using a Computer name space-based folder to do the testing. Perhaps there's another method, but the one you've documented above doesn't throw it for a loop.

I've been saying all along there are several different problems here, one of which is almost certainly associated with fooling with the UserFiles or Libraries namespace root.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Edited by Noel Carboni Thursday, February 23, 2012 2:26 AM corrected punctuation

Thursday, February 23, 2012 2:25 AM

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Noel,

I've compressed the video. It should be a little easier to handle.
Let me know if you are able to download it.

Wow, 13 MB instead of 3.5 GB - nice work! Yes, I was able to download and play it.

The first thing I can see is that you're working in your My Documents folder under the Libraries name space.

Please try the exact same operations but working under the Computer name space.

Specifically, over in the left panel expand Computer, then C: and navigate down through Users, your username, and into your My Documents or My Games folder. I'll be interested to hear whether you see the same failures to update.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Edited by Noel Carboni Thursday, February 23, 2012 2:35 AM clarified wording

Thursday, February 23, 2012 2:34 AM

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Careful, Vapor Lock, you're kind of edging toward the line between being helpful and heckling. You know very well that they don't stand for the latter around here.

Hey, I'm on your side - I am really trying to get to the bottom of what's wrong with this turkey. You've been very helpful at pointing out ways to break it, and it seems to me I've acknowledged you at every turn.

With the ability to reproduce a problem comes a greater likelihood Microsoft will fix it, though honestly it's too late for Windows 7. I doubt seriously they particularly want to fix Windows 7 at this point, though - if anything they want to leave it irritating so that people will buy Windows 8 to get out from under the problems they could never quite work around.

I encourage you to develop habits that help avoid the problems in Windows 7, and also to report ways to reproduce problems in Windows 8 via the feedback tool. That's what I'm doing.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Thursday, February 23, 2012 2:45 AM

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Please try to heed all of it then, and avoid taking it out of context. That's all I ask.

-Noel

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Thursday, February 23, 2012 3:03 AM

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Noel,

I'm pretty sure I already tested starting from C: and was not able to reproduce the issue. I will test again though.
Also, although the 'launch folder windows in a separate process,' doesn't completely fix the issue. It may help mitigate it.

Saturday, February 25, 2012 7:30 PM

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OK, thanks for that info. I wasn't sure whether you had seen a direct difference between the two. No need to re-test.

On the separate process setting, that sounds about right. I wouldn't expect it to fix the issue directly - just eliminate the accumulation of data corruption in that instance of Explorer from having seen problems with past operations, so even if you have seen problems the chance is less you'll see further problems - a bit like rebooting Windows regularly.

All these "best practices" together just serve to reduce the chances of seeing problems and make it more likely to get things done without error.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Saturday, February 25, 2012 10:12 PM

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Hey Vapor Lock, for what it's worth the nest/unnest folder0/1/2 thing seems to be fixed in the Windows 8 Customer Preview. I just ran through it twice without a crash of Explorer.

Looks like it might have done some good to report a reproducible problem.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Thursday, March 1, 2012 12:36 AM

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I had the having to refresh problem on my old computer. New computer fine. Problem appeared after porting internet expolorer favorites. Don't know if that was the cause.

Keen to hear of success of others before trying vapor locks solution as "what bad thing might come later for doing it" sounds a bit too ominous...

Sunday, March 4, 2012 9:47 AM

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Thank you so much!

I did not have the problem until I clean installed Windows 7 onto a SSD I had purchased to upgrade my computer, I tried many things found on threads like these but had no luck with anything else but this.

Sunday, March 11, 2012 3:35 PM

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Removal of NavPane key worked for me!

No bad consequences arisen so far. Actually, I would not have dared to remove the key unless I googled and found also other cases where it was suggested to be removed (for resetting directory tree to default). So, thank you Vapor Lock, and thanks Noel for persistence :)

Wednesday, March 28, 2012 9:57 PM

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thank you Vapor lock,

this action solved the issue for me!!!

B4 deleting, first bit was 09, after deleting it has been

change to 06 & problem was solved!!!.

i also notice that if you change theme & change it back the problem disappear,

but it's not permanent solution.

Proposed as answer by GILI09 Sunday, April 8, 2012 2:33 PM

Sunday, April 8, 2012 2:33 PM

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HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-wwwwwwwwww-xxxxxxxxxx-yyyyyyyyyy-zzzz\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Modules\NavPane

....

I tested this hack (deleting this key) with a few different accounts which were afflicted this way. So I think it stands a good chance of working for you too, Alceryes.

Sadly, that didn't work for me. I have exported the key before and after. They are exactly the same.

Monday, April 23, 2012 3:48 AM

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One such way that seems to make a difference on some systems is to avoid using Libraries entirely.

Another is to avoid the use of the desktop for any kind of file activity. Yes, I know that involves retraining oneself, but in just using folders on the hard drive I don't see these problems.

Another thing that helps seems to be to turn off various unnecessary stuff, such as indexing, which appears to make the system snappier and less likely to run afoul of refresh issues.

Well, thanks but I'd rather to retrain myself keep hitting F5 (which I am) rather than scarifying all these feature. Bear in mind that from XP to W7, it's considered as "upgrade".

The system seems to run best on fast, modern hardware (no surprise there - what kinds of computers do you think all the Microsoft people develop with in their richest of rich companies? Do you think their developers use computers more than a year or two old?).

I'm running Lenovo ThinkPad X220 with 8GB RAM and SSD drive, is this also considered not modern hardware?

Proposed as answer by zeddieBanned Thursday, May 31, 2012 5:29 PM

Monday, April 23, 2012 4:37 AM

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Well, thanks but I'd rather to retrain myself keep hitting F5 (which I am) rather than scarifying all these feature. Bear in mind that from XP to W7, it's considered as "upgrade".

Unfortunately, that will get you into trouble sooner or later, because you'll forget to hit F5 and believe that what you're seeing is accurate. The proposal I put forth really works, and there's no real downside. What do you feel you lose by not using Libraries or the desktop for file storage? It's easy to learn to use the hard drive and it keeps you grounded in what you're really doing on the computer anyway - the reduction of abstraction is probably precisely why it works better.

I'm not apologizing for Microsoft's shoddy work here, I'm just trying to find reasonable ways to live with it.

-Noel

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Monday, April 23, 2012 5:54 PM

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To all...

I have been having the problem of the non-refreshing folder/items/icons etc since I installed Win 7. I am currently running Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit. I think that the solution to all your problems is something that I cannot believe worked, but just simply go into your local area network properties and un-check client for microsoft networks. I did that and all of my refresh issues have been solved.

Happy days are here again.

Edited by Stunned21 Tuesday, April 24, 2012 3:10 PM

Tuesday, April 24, 2012 3:09 PM

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Interesting observation, Stunned21, thanks for your input. Unfortunately, that's a workaround that would have limited acceptance at best, since many people rely on Microsoft networking.

The connection between what you've done and seeing the problem being resolved may be a loose one. The problem in general seems to be one in which the more stuff that's "tied" to Explorer and slowing it down, the more likely it is to occur. It's as if anything that changes the timing of the system even just a little pushes Explorer over the edge.

-Noel

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Wednesday, April 25, 2012 2:12 PM

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I don't remember reading this before, but if it was discussed, sorry for a repost:

Do people who have this problem enabled

Windows Explorer > Tools > Folder Options > View > Launch folder windows in a separate process

option? I have been using my computer for about a week after turning this off, and I have not seen the refresh problem recur yet. Just curious.

Thanks.

GT

Monday, April 30, 2012 5:41 PM

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It does occur with 'launch folder windows in a seperate process' checked but not as often.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012 6:17 PM

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Yes, the "separate process" workaround was discussed up above. It helps, sometimes.

That's just it. There is no fix, nor even a solid workaround... There are just things one can do to minimize the occurrences, to the point where your system is usable. Not everyone's going to like doing without the things that the suggestions propose, but doing them sure beats having wrong or outdated information on the screen leading one to make mistakes.

-Noel

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Edited by Noel Carboni Tuesday, May 1, 2012 9:49 PM

Tuesday, May 1, 2012 9:48 PM

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Finally discovered this thread. Amazing, a situation going on for over 3 years, over many Windows releases. Hows that for quality? I have had the problem off and on for a while now. I'm now on Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit. Currently, it is occuring nearly all of the time, i'd say 90+% of the time, but every so often it will work correctly for a while, then it stops. My conclusion after alot of reading is that there is no known, reliable solution, although various things have helped some people, and i may try "avoiding using libraries" since thats one of the easy ones, to see if it helps for me. No, i don't care to start speculatively mucking around in the registry, for instance. This problem is very, very irriating, and has lead me to make errors, and spend time "being confused" before i recall exactly what the issue is. Yesterday, for the first time, it happened to me in the IE Favorites Bar. That is, i deleted a Favorite from the bar and it didn't go away. I don't see a way to "refresh the favories bar" (F5 does not do it, for instance). But, when i opened a new IE window, indeed the item i had deleted was gone.

I'm mostly posting here to vent my total disgust with Microsoft about this. This functionality is obvsiously a very basic, core Windows functionality, not some corner of Windows used only by a few geeks. While the bean counters may just think, oh well, he's still buying our product, we're getting the dollars, I do have to believe that the continuing quality deterioriation of MS products and lack of response to customer problems, will eventually bite them. I will drift away bit by bit. Be less interested in MS future offerings due to perception of low quality and low responsiveness to obvsiously serious problems. I just downloaded some freeware called Explorer++. I'll see if i like it. Just drift slowly away and avoid MS products...

Sunday, May 6, 2012 4:55 PM

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This worked instantly! Thank you Thank you

Well Done

Monday, May 7, 2012 12:45 AM

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This has recently started for me and I don't see how anyone can put up with it, it's a nightmare, never 100% sure what you're looking at is right, I'm getting completely paranoid, pressing F5 far more than I need to, just so that I don't delete the wrong file.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone has used procmon.exe with filters for explorer.exe and registry access to see what (if any) differences there are between a working and non-working system? http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645 Essentially, this can show you what registry entries the process accesses and what values are read.

Edited by Adrian Parker Monday, May 14, 2012 3:28 PM

Monday, May 14, 2012 2:50 PM

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The event sequence seems far too complex to be able to find a difference that way - at least not easily. But I encourage you to give it a try; you might get lucky!

-Noel

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Tuesday, May 15, 2012 12:53 AM

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Unfortunately, I only have 1 machine, and having tried all of the things listed as 'fixes', nothing ever works.. it's always broken, whether I access directories on the C drive via library or direct, it always fails to refresh in win explorer.. the only reliable way is in dos as I'm pre-configured to do a DIR in there to see what's actually there by default :)

Tuesday, May 15, 2012 8:36 AM

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Wow, this is truly unbelievable. I have a 64 bit machine originally built for Vista (Dell T7400 with lots of power), but after having too many problems, I went to windows XP 64. I just had the machine wiped and installed windows 7, I figured there would be no problems. But not only is the machine slow now (just like Vista), I also am dealing with this issue of constantly having to refresh just to see where something has been moved.

This just isn't worth it to me. I am lucky that I can have my computer reimaged back to windows XP 64.

What a joke.

Edited by ClayT101 Thursday, May 24, 2012 9:31 PM
Proposed as answer by zeddieBanned Thursday, May 31, 2012 6:06 PM

Thursday, May 24, 2012 9:30 PM

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Well, after letting the computer do major updates last night, drag and drop seems to be working now. Maybe I will keep windows 7.

Friday, May 25, 2012 2:33 PM

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I'm wondering if the slowness that I sometimes experience in browsing the 'libraries' section can also be attributed to this bug? This problem occurs in at least the documents and downloads section and I'd guess that it can occur in all the libraries sections.

The problem manifests itself in a 7 second pause before showing the contents of the downloads or documents folder. During this pause the mouse wheel spins and the address bar fills with green like it's really working on something. This happens at random probably around 30% of the time (haven't really counted). When it's working correctly it displays the contents almost instantaneously. It doesn't matter whether folders contents have been modified or not.

Come to think of it, do you guys remember that Vista file copy bug that was fixed by Microsoft? The one where a small file (50k) would take a stupidly long time to copy from one folder to another on the same computer(?) Vista would sit there saying 'calculating the time it will take...' for over 30 seconds then copy the file in the blink of an eye.

Hmmm....

Sunday, May 27, 2012 3:29 PM

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When the delay happens, is anything logged in your Event Log? One (not so nice) thing that comes to mind is the possibility a weak sector having to be re-read repeatedly by the HDD controller before it gets the CRC right, and if that's happening I think it would be logged.

-Noel

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Sunday, May 27, 2012 8:14 PM

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Nothing in eventvwr and I've experienced this on at least 3 different systems. All hard disks check fine with chkdsk as well as more advanced hard disk monitoring programs and there are no SMART errors at all. I've experienced this with spindle hard disks and SSD drives. I'm 100% sure that there is nothing wrong with the hardware on any of my desktops or laptops (wouldn't be a very good systems admin if there were).

I can try and produce another video...may take me a few days (week) to get to it though.

Edit - Also, to clarify, when this bug occurs the libraries folder opens (either downloads or documents) but is empty while the wheel spins and green bar progresses, until it 'wakes up' and displays the folder contents.

Edited by Alceryes Monday, May 28, 2012 3:52 AM

Monday, May 28, 2012 3:44 AM

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Forgive me for asking about something basic, but is it possible a disk is just powered-down due to power-saving options, and has to spin up before you see results?

-Noel

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Monday, May 28, 2012 11:47 PM

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Hehehe, no need to ask forgiveness. I always start with the simplest possibilities when diagnosing.
To answer your question, no, the drives are not powered down or in any kind of sleep state.

These could be related...anywho, I'll try to get a video demonstration soon.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012 5:35 PM

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...haven't had time to produce a video yet, but it's definitely something with the 'libraries'.

I can open and close a C: drive explorer window (with C: drive contents appearing instantaneously) 3 time before my 'libraries' window shows it's contents.

Monday, June 4, 2012 1:49 PM

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I'm a longtime Windows user, running W7 Home Premium, mid-level technical competence. This started for me a few days ago when I began an overhaul of image file names.

I've read through all the posts, tried some of the less-technical suggestions, and was considering junking the unit for a new computer when I tried accessing my folders without going through the Library as suggested by someone here, I think. Voila! So far, so good, so we'll see if it continues.

But it got me wondering if a new computer would even fix the problem, considering I'd be transferring my old image files. Any ideas, or is the fact that the problem hasn't been definitively identified mean there is no answer to the question?

Margaret

Wednesday, June 6, 2012 1:52 PM

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This is completely ridiculous. I've been living with this bug for months now and tried dozens of proposed fixes, none of which work. Now it's started on a second machine and has tripped me up more than once because what the OS is reporting does not reflect the true contents of the disks.

This is one of the most fundamental things an OS needs to do and Windows 7 can't do it reliably. If this bug is carried across to Windows 8 then it really is going to be the last straw. Come on Microsoft, you have more competition than ever with all the other great OSes that are around now so you really can't afford to let an annoying bug like this drag on and on and on for years can you?

Proposed as answer by zeddieBanned Saturday, June 9, 2012 6:48 PM

Friday, June 8, 2012 6:26 AM

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Scott how can I get in contact with you?

Keith Kabza

Saturday, June 9, 2012 6:47 PM

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Keith, it's nice to see Microsoft taking an interest.

May I ask what it is that Scott has said to pique your interest that none of the other 200 posters in this sequence of threads has said? Is it that he appears to have a way to reproduce the problem?

Go Scott!

-Noel

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Saturday, June 9, 2012 8:47 PM

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Hi Keith,

Thanks for responding. I'm not sure how you wish to contact me. The email attached to my profile is my work email which you are welcome to use. Obviously, I don't wish to publish it publicly on this forum so I'm hoping you can access it. I don't see any way of using PM on this forum either. What do you propose?

Sunday, June 10, 2012 7:57 AM

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Please note that if I turn off the write-cache buffer flushing it DOES fix the problem but I'm very wary of doing this as I don't have a UPS.

Sunday, June 10, 2012 8:05 AM

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I just thought i'd add that both myself and a friend who both bought samsung nc110s with Windows 7 are both having the problem listed in these threads. It is immensely re-assuring that some two years after someone first pointed out this problem still nothing has been fixed for certain. I run a law firm and accuracy of files, speed of deletion, lack of clutter, speed of changing names of folders is important. Microsoft will be glad to learn that when another friend at a larger law firm asked me if it was worth updating to 7, I told them my problems and directed them to this thread. They chose to stick with xp, having tried vista and decided it wasn't worth the update.

Microsoft operatives and fans who appear on tech forums always seem bemused why so many of its users return to xp or never left it. This seems a good place for them to start. It seems to me extraordinary that the one thing that 7 is poor at is ORGANIZING things.

Sunday, June 10, 2012 11:35 PM

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I think you will find that turning off 'write-cache' only mitigates the issue a bit. It doesn't completely stop it.
At least that was my finding...

Monday, June 11, 2012 4:54 PM

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Hate to say it, but XP had update problems as well, especially where network operations were involved. It had the F5 refresh capability too (as well as a refresh button, if I'm not mixing up my past versions).

That's not to say these Windows 7 issues aren't worse, inasmuch as they've provided these "handy new" abstractions (libraries, et. al.) that don't work reliably, which worsens the problem at a higher level. It's pretty clear that at least someone thinks these new abstractions can be useful, but if you want more reliable operation you have to avoid them. Wasn't it once called "false advertising" to tout a feature that doesn't actually work?

I've personally not had one failure to refresh so far with Windows 8 RP, but then I don't tend to use Windows in ways that bring about this problem. It seems clear they have been doing at least some maintenance work on Explorer, even though most of their attention has been focused on WinRT and Metro apps.

-Noel

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Monday, June 11, 2012 5:16 PM

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Yes, you're right. Turning off the write-cache only fixes the problem for me when creating and renaming folders. It still fails to refresh when I do a longer operation such as copying a file into a folder. Still waiting for Keith from Microsoft to get in contact with me.

Proposed as answer by just another techy Thursday, June 14, 2012 3:04 PM
Unproposed as answer by just another techy Thursday, June 14, 2012 3:04 PM

Tuesday, June 12, 2012 6:51 PM

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This looks like a profile problem "Deleting files does not make the file disappear until I refresh "

We had the same problem. Created a new profiles, copied all files acorss to the new profile, Everything is now working ok.

Messed around with this for about 4 hours, in the end just created a new profile.

Thursday, June 14, 2012 3:07 PM

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Techy, the problem will come back sooner or later. Bank on it.

-Noel

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Thursday, June 14, 2012 5:20 PM

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Somebody's scared Microsoft away. They don't want to talk to me anymore :-(

I guess they have no idea how to fix this problem.

Thursday, June 14, 2012 6:37 PM

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This problem has been annoying me since I upgraded to my first Win 7 64-bit machine this past January. I've tried everything on these boards to fix the problem. The only thing that seems to work is to remove mapped drive links that point to drives that are currently offline. I had links to a mapped drive in My Pictures, My Videos, and My Music favorites. When I removed the links, the refresh problem went away.... mostly.

Now the problem shows up if I've been doing some RAM intensive tasks during the day (graphics). This doesn't make sense as I have 8-gb of RAM on my machine. It could be related to the graphics RAM rather than the system RAM. It takes several hours to pop up after reboot. The other day, I was able to clear the problem by restarting Windows File Explorer.

I also discovered that Windows Update KB2718704 caused the problem. I hadn't seen the problem appear for a couple weeks until that update installed. As soon as I removed it, the problem went away. Installed it, problem appeared... Now I'm ignoring the update, but it's a pain because Windows Update says I need it. I have disabled my Windows Update for now, but it's a PITA.

For reference, I'm running Win Pro 7, 64-bit. 8 GB RAM, Intel i7, SSD HD, Intel HD Graphics 3000.

Edited by pkarpenter Friday, June 22, 2012 5:37 PM
Proposed as answer by damjal Monday, July 16, 2012 9:28 PM

Friday, June 22, 2012 5:32 PM

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Wanted to report that I think I've found the cause of the slow libraries browsing - it's MSE. (Note: I'm not talking about the copy/paste/refresh bug)

While I'm waiting for the libraries to show up, MsMpEng.exe is causing hundreds of hard page faults per sec! I KNOW I'm not infected and I actually found out that it was MSE by installing Orca (MSI editor). The Orca install (direct from Microsoft) also causes MSE to go crazy.

Now I just have to figure out what's making Security Essentials bug out.

Friday, June 22, 2012 8:53 PM

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Something you might try: Remove MSE and try the Avast free antivirus package, which seems to be quite efficient.

I know that Windows 8 will have MSE more tightly integrated, so maybe this just puts off the problem a little while.

-Noel

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Saturday, June 23, 2012 4:33 AM

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I've removed MSE now and put Avast on. It's definitely better but still doesn't cure the problem when copying files, only when creating new folders. Wow, this bug is so annoying and Microsoft are so quiet about it. All these fixes are trying to reduce the amount of work that gets done on each file operation which is only skirting around the problem. The REAL problem is that Windows Explorer has some really dumb timeout setting that makes it stop prematurely before the information that its displaying actually mirrors what's written to the filesystem. How hard can it be to fix it !!!

Saturday, June 23, 2012 8:21 AM

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Thank you, it worked for me too.

I'm running : Win Pro 7, 64-bit. 8 GB RAM, Intel i5, 8GB RAM on a Toshiba Tecra S13

Monday, July 16, 2012 9:32 PM

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Has anyone heard anything more about this bug???

If anyone from Microsoft would like to watch a 13MB video in which I am able to demonstrate the problem over and over again please let me know. I would be more than happy to send it to you or put it back up on my FTP for a day.

Sunday, July 22, 2012 10:39 PM

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Have you tried Windows 8 yet, Alceryes? And if so, have you reproduced the failure to refresh in that environment?

-Noel

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Monday, July 23, 2012 1:12 AM

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...haven't tried it in Windows 8 yet.

After 10 mins of testing in Server 2012 RC I wasn't able to reproduce it though. Hopefully it's squashed.

Monday, July 23, 2012 11:59 PM

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I've removed MSE now and put Avast on. It's definitely better but still doesn't cure the problem when copying files, only when creating new folders. Wow, this bug is so annoying and Microsoft are so quiet about it. All these fixes are trying to reduce the amount of work that gets done on each file operation which is only skirting around the problem. The REAL problem is that Windows Explorer has some really dumb timeout setting that makes it stop prematurely before the information that its displaying actually mirrors what's written to the filesystem. How hard can it be to fix it !!!

I also switched to Avast, but I'm sad to have to report that it doesn't solve the problem. I tried a lot of tips in this thread, switched off a lot of fancy video stuff, but nothing seems to get rid of this very malicious problem.

Last Sunday I fell victim to it again and have been chasing phantom files and dirs in a big big directory for half an afternoon. I hope that I didn't lose important things, because it was on my archive drive. I noticed that the F5 refresh does not refresh the directory tree view no matter how many times I press it. Only when I started noticing the inconsistencies between the dir tree listing and the normal dir listing, I new things were screwed up again.

I just can't believe that MS ignores this problem and doesn't explain to us what is really going on and keep us posted about progress in this matter. It needs serious attention. I have the professional edition of Win7, but it can't be used in a professional environment. Screwing up directory listings like this is just too dangerous!

First I was afraid that the problem would be due to a malfunction in the graphics routines in the Intel HD Graphics 2000 unit, but when I run Linux on the same machine I haven't witnessed similar problems yet.

What is the best way to mitigate this problem? MS I'd like some support on your product please, I paid good money for it.

For reference, I'm running Win Pro 7, 64-bit. 4 GB RAM, Intel i5-2320 @ 3.00GHz, 1 TB HD, Intel HD Graphics 2000.

Thursday, August 2, 2012 10:48 AM

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Windows explorer ---- forget it. It is ridiculous what the guys program(med), a colossal mess. They simply do not get it.

Thursday, August 2, 2012 5:24 PM

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Build 9200, eh?

Aero glass appears to be gone, or was that your choice?

We can see from the image a folder on the left in the Navigation pane with stuff in it, yet nothing showing on the right in the Files pane. Can you still crash it under cut/paste load as before as well?

Heavy sigh. :-(

-Noel

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Saturday, August 4, 2012 11:54 PM

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Thanks.

Well, that pretty much sucks. I guess that says that fixing these problems would take talent not seen at Microsoft since... Well... Not seen at Microsoft.

And things with visual styles that somehow couldn't be dug out in time by 10,000 programmers, e.g., the grayish-blue headings in the Actions column, are just starting to look SO "yesteryear". How did we ever tolerate such extravagance and waste of resources?

Yeah, this is pretty much Windows 3.1, but able to crash MUCH more quickly.

-Noel

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Sunday, August 5, 2012 1:16 AM

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A good solution :

de-selecting "Use Sharing Wizard" in Folder View Options, re-start explorer.exe.

I find the solution here :

http://www.w7forums.com/cure-windows-explorer-not-refreshing-t10534p2.html

Proposed as answer by pkarpenter Tuesday, September 4, 2012 3:20 PM

Friday, August 10, 2012 9:53 AM

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I disabled "Use Sharing Wizard" eons ago. Everything in Windows 7 seems to work better when the old, core functionality is what's relied upon.

That said, it doesn't really sound like it could have that much to do with this problem. I think it may be just a coincidence that you stopped seeing the problem on making this change. Would be nice to hear from others, though - it could be the magic bullet after all.

-Noel

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Saturday, August 11, 2012 1:07 AM

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I disabled "Use Sharing Wizard" eons ago. Everything in Windows 7 seems to work better when the old, core functionality is what's relied upon.

That said, it doesn't really sound like it could have that much to do with this problem. I think it may be just a coincidence that you stopped seeing the problem on making this change. Would be nice to hear from others, though - it could be the magic bullet after all.

-Noel

Well I'll try it, unchecking the Sharing Wizard. This bug has been annoying me since I got my Win 7 laptop (XP's Explorer worked just fine). Such a sloppy thing to leave in a final product IMO.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012 1:24 AM

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Yes, with a few contextual changes for W7, that works, but the story gets stranger:

in order to reproduce the problem, I reverted to the original settings, and the problem was still fixed (i.e. the file list is updated immediately).

Tuesday, August 21, 2012 10:36 AM

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823291/en-us

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Disabling "Use Sharing Wizard" has functioned for me for 3-4 weeks ... Now it is as before, and the settings has not been changed.

Just think that the hotfix is available for Windows XP :

it's a shame !

Monday, September 3, 2012 9:04 PM

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I have been struggling with this folder refresh issue since January (when I first started using Win 7). This is the first solution that has worked consistently for the past month.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012 3:21 PM

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I think I have come across a POSSIBLE solution for the Explorer auto-update (or lack thereof) problem discussed in this thread. This solution was casually mentioned by another poster (Nucleo) in Part 1 of this massive discussion as a fix used in Windows XP for a similar problem, but I tried the exact same fix in Win 7 64-bit, and it seems to work.

So far the solution is working 100% on my machine, which previously had severe problems with Explorer not updating almost any time I added, deleted, or moved files around. Hopefully it won't end up being some temporary fix that mysteriously reverts back.

The fix is to create a registry key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Update]
"UpdateMode"=dword:00000000

In other words, go into the Registry, and in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control, create a key called Update. Within that, make a DWORD value named UpdateMode with value 0.

On my machine, the problem instantly stopped when I added this key. Please try this fix and report back whether or not it works for you.

This seemed to work for me, so far anyway. Will see if it stays that way for more than one day. Cheers!

Edit 2 hours later and its not working again. I suspect its the wireless HP printer!!!

Edited by raaaabert Monday, September 24, 2012 2:08 PM

Monday, September 24, 2012 11:36 AM

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I solved the problem of removing the Google Drive.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 8:37 AM

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Ok its not the HP printer.

THIS IS SO BLOODY ANNOYING. I work with lots of windows files and having to refresh every time I make a change is driving me NUTS!!!!!

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 10:41 AM

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Hehehe...the elephant in the room is only annoying once you find him...then you can't take your eyes off!

Funny, I haven't been able to duplicate this in either Windows 8 or Server 2012. I'm wondering how those who have found it are reproducing the issue(?)

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 2:32 PM

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I don't see the problem personally in normal use with Windows 7 or 8 BUT... I've both deconfigured Libraries (per the instructions in my books) and trained myself to use actual hard drive folders, which clearly minimizes the problems. In short, I've followed the "Doc, it hurts when I do this!", "Well, then don't DO that!" philosophy, which seems to work well with Windows.

But yes, if those posting about this issue would kindly offer some specifics about how they're reproducing the problem, it might be possible to further the cause of finding a silver bullet workaround - if one exists. Otherwise it's just making this thread longer with information we already knew - that Windows Explorer has a terrible flaw that allows the screen to go without update.

By the way, I put the Windows 8 Enterprise Evaluation version on actual hardware not long ago (opposed to running it in VMs) and ran it for about a week. It ran just fine, though to be honest I couldn't find any fundamental differences between running it on actual hardware vs. in virtual hardware with Windows 8, which I'm happy about. That says my work environment (Windows 7 as the main system, Windows 8 in VMs) is sound. I don't see myself upgrading my main workstation to Windows 8 any time soon.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 4:38 PM

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My clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit is only a week old and I am now experiencing this refresh problem.

None of the above solutions worked for me.

Echoing the words of Marty11 above,

"What is the best way to mitigate this problem? MS I'd like some support on your product please, I paid good money for it."

Thursday, September 27, 2012 12:47 AM

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Right click e.g. the documents folder and select properties and choose optimize this folder for general items

Proposed as answer by barose1 Monday, November 5, 2012 3:56 PM

Monday, October 15, 2012 6:44 PM

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I've discovered the problem of the files not refreshing happens when the the files are NOT in alphabetical order.

In other words, the problem DOES NOT happen when you sort in reverse alphabetical order.

Still bugs me constantly, though, and it's really too bad. This is one of the most basic functions of a computer.

No wonder Apple is the biggest company now. Their stuff "just works." Microsoft has a lot of lessons to learn still, clearly.

Thank you ericshawn. This has solved my case also. The files were sorted according to Photo Taken column. When I sort alphabetically according to Filename, problem solved.

Edited by riarda Monday, November 5, 2012 9:42 AM

Monday, November 5, 2012 9:37 AM

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Right click e.g. the documents folder and select properties and choose optimize this folder for general items

Thanks "heerbommel"!

I have been experiencing the same problem and this solution (optimize for general items) seems to have worked for me. I have a new system, Windows 7 Professional. I don't believe the problem was happening right out of the box. I think it started after I changed some settings in an attempt to get my system to stop accessing the hard drive so frequently. I'm sorry I don't recall exactly but I believe it had been set to "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties" and I unchecked that box (right click C:, choose properties). That is when (I believe) the problem started. I apologize for any inaccuracies, I also have been installing and uninstalling and updating (like you do with a new system) so I could be wrong. Anyway, this suggestion about optimizing seems to have worked. I did it in the left navigation pane, under "Libraries," the "Documents" folder (I have created numerous sub-folders under here - this is where I keep everything). I hope this is helpful.

Edited by barose1 Monday, November 5, 2012 4:08 PM added quote

Monday, November 5, 2012 4:03 PM

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There is a way to get Windows Explorer to always treat folders as General Items folders, which I find to be a good "To Work" option. Perhaps this setting is all or part of why I don't see the refresh issue.

Excerpted from my book:

Microsoft seems to feel you need to see different views of your files depending on predominantly what kinds of files you have in a folder. From our perspective, they're all just files, and we'd like to see them in one way - the "General Items" view, showing the name, folder, mod date, etc.

• If you do not want Explorer to try to auto-detect Folder Types but always use "General Items" for all, add this registry value:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Classes \ Local Settings \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ Shell \ Bags \ AllFolders \ Shell]

FolderType REG_SZ NotSpecified

Note that with a General Items view folder you can still request to see thumbnails of images or list view, etc.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Monday, November 5, 2012 4:58 PM

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...

Possible workaround to Windows Explorer update problems

Open a Windows Explorer window.
Right-click on one of your hard drives and chooseProperties.
Click the Hardware tab.
Choose the physical hard drive on which you're going to try to reproduce Explorer update problems.
Click the [ Properties ] button.
Click the Policies tab and make the change shown below, then OK out of everything.

Note the warning Microsoft provides for this setting. If you do find you prefer this setting, make sure you understand that you're taking some additional risk of data loss by choosing this setting. That said, I've run with this setting for several years now on several different workstations with NO ill effects, and with enhanced disk performance. Note that I DO have uninterruptable power supplies on these workstations, so I do not take unexpected power hits, and they're very stable (no crashes).

-Noel

Noel, this solution seems to work on my updated, 64-bit W7 EE SP1 office machine. I hope it stays that way. :)

Ant @ Ant's Quality Foraged Links (http://aqfl.net) and The Ant Farm (http://antfarm.ma.cx).

Friday, November 9, 2012 8:57 PM

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Hi

I have severe update problem when not only browser item did not refresh but I could not even delete the history node in Explorer and my F5 seems to get shining soon due to extreme use... I have tried a lot of other tricks written in internet. None does not work. microsoft fails too. This trick worked out instanly. Many thanks. Best regards, Orest

Saturday, November 10, 2012 12:12 PM

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Glad to hear this has helped with some systems. Thank you for the feedback, guys.

Between the disable buffer flushing setting, which certainly influences the timing of disk operations, and several other options I normally choose to set (e.g., the tweak to have Explorer show General Items view for everything by default) it seems this problem is substantially worked around with little downside. At this point I've been running the same Windows 7 install since 2009, and it's as solid and usable as ever, without refresh issues in normal operation.

As far as I can tell these same options positively influence File Explorer to behave better in Windows 8 as well.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Saturday, November 10, 2012 5:46 PM

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Gentlemen, just to make sure we are speaking the same language, could somebody please confirm, we are talking about issues with Windows Explorer like the one, displayed in the figure below:

In short, you select a file in Windows Explorer and press delete. The file, which is supposed to hide away from the list after it's been deleted, remains listed as hidden, and when you second the command to delete the file by pressing delete for a second time, you get a message like that one on the screenshot.

It is it?

Thank you.

Well this is the world we live in And these are the hands we're given...

Monday, November 12, 2012 11:21 AM

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Yes, it's the part where it didn't appear from the list, specifically. If it had, you wouldn't have been able to try to delete it twice.

Per the original post at the top of this thread:

After deleting files: deleted files do not disappear.

The same "To Work" option tweaks mentioned in this thread all seem to apply to Windows 8. Those I would suggest investigating first:

Work on files/folders rooted on Computer or Network, not in Libraries or the other abstractions.
Make the tweaks to speed up the disk access, such as the buffer flushing setting change if possible.
Set up to use General Items view in File Explorer.

I'll be interested in hearing whether these things help in your situation, since you seem to have a way to reproduce problems with File Explorer on Windows 8.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Edited by Noel Carboni Monday, November 12, 2012 12:47 PM

Monday, November 12, 2012 12:47 PM

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Hello, I'm new to W7 and was only having the refresh problem on 1 of 3 new/recent to me W7 machines. After reading/scanning the above comments I went to the uppermost folder I could> Properties > Customize > Optimize this folder for > (General Items was the default) and checked the Also apply this template to all subfolders box. My version of this problem seems to have been solved. FYI and thanks to all who contributed.

Thursday, November 29, 2012 9:10 PM

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Thanks for reporting back. You're not the first to report that workaround helping them. I've used General Items views everywhere for a very long time.

FYI, note my November 5 post above describing a registry change that you can do that will cause Windows to make all new folders in the future with the General Items view. Search the thread for "NotSpecified".

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Edited by Noel Carboni Thursday, November 29, 2012 9:33 PM

Thursday, November 29, 2012 9:33 PM

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Awesome, that worked for me! I had an office network drive set up, that would rarely connect (as I'm rarely connected to my office VPN). Removing this drive connection solved the problem... what a relief, that was starting to drive me crazy...

Wednesday, December 5, 2012 7:57 PM

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Thought this might help in some cases.

New file or folder does not appear in a Library on a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2769478/en-us

Edited by HomeCloset Wednesday, December 12, 2012 7:11 AM format

Wednesday, December 12, 2012 7:09 AM

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I've had this problem for a long time and I've been following this thread with interest.

My particular problem takes the intermittent form. Everything will be OK for quite a while then, suddenly, nothing will refresh in Explorer, and it stays that way. I've tried suggestions such as disabling buffer flushing or using a General Items view, but nothing seemed to work. Avoiding the use of Libraries seemed to have possibilities but it would involve me changing long-ingrained work habits.

However, I'm hopeful that qwerty88's suggestion of using a batch file to restart Explorer is going to solve the problem. It's very quick and the time lost is mainly stopping then restarting work on what you were doing. As the problem is only intermittent for me it's a usable work-around.

I'd agree with the suggestion made above that something cumulative is happening that suddenly reaches a tipping point.

Edited by Didymos2 Friday, December 14, 2012 3:24 PM

Friday, December 14, 2012 3:23 PM

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You could try setting the Folder Options option that causes new Explorer windows to be opened in a separate process, Didymos2. That may result in you getting a fresh "start" of Explorer without having to do a disruptive restart.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Friday, December 14, 2012 7:08 PM

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Thanks for the reply. I hope that the qwerty88 method will keep solving the problem for me but, if not, I'll bear your comment in mind. However, one point. I did a bit of googling after reading your reply and found this comment on the well-known Windows Seven forum:

**************************************************************************************************************************

When you have the option Launch folder windows in a separate process checked, it does not mean that each window that you have opened opens in a separate process (just to confuse things). What this actually does is separate the main explorer process (the one that provides the main Shell and the desktop) from your open folders.

Option enabled (checked):
Folders open in the same process as each other, but a separate instance to the process that provides the Shell.

Option disabled (unchecked, default):
Folders open in the same process as each other, in the same instance to the process that provides the Shell.

******************************************************************************************************************

Live is never straightforward, is it? :)

Saturday, December 15, 2012 7:52 PM

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Hi Noel. Thank you so much for your tips and patience. Applying your tweaks (particularly disabling thumbnails cache) has caused some improvement to my system, but explorer issues still recur. These are two typical scenarios of mine:

1. I download a compressed archive, extract and try to rename the folder. I randomly get a "file in use" or "permission" error; if so, I'm not even allowed to access the Security tab under Properties in order to gain ownership and Admin control. After a while, say 30 secs to one minute, the folder is unlocked and becomes editable.

2. I want to replace a software backup installer stored in an external HDD with a new one of the latest build. Overwriting is denied because I "need Admin permission". I try to delete the file (Shift-Canc), it disappears, but is still there and pop-ups if I just exit the folder and go back to it. After a while, the file is released by the system and automatically deleted.

I'm noticing that these issues are more likely to occur with .exe files, folders containing .exe, and on machines where previous OS (namely XP) were installed. And I know it's weird, but leaving "Turn off write-cache buffer flushing" unchecked seems to give better results.

Regards.

Edited by Blue in Green Tuesday, December 18, 2012 11:30 AM

Monday, December 17, 2012 12:13 PM

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Blue in Green, what you describe (being that seems to affect .exe files) sounds like it could be interference from your antivirus/antimalware solution.

If you can reproduce the issue fairly readily, run the Resource Monitor and watch the Disk Activity and Processes with Disk Activity sections in the Disk tab. Maybe it will give you an idea of what process is accessing the file(s) you're trying to manipulate.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Monday, December 17, 2012 8:45 PM

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When you have the option Launch folder windows in a separate process checked, it does not mean that each window that you have opened opens in a separate process (just to confuse things).

That's not been my observation. It may have to do with the way you start Explorer.

Note the increasing number of explorer.exe processes in the screen grabs below, just from opening additional Explorer windows. Note that I open them from shortcuts on the desktop that run commands like: C:\Windows\explorer.exe /expand,C:\

Perhaps opening Explorer windows another way - the way you do - causes the behavior you describe. All I can say is try starting it my way.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Monday, December 17, 2012 9:04 PM

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@Noel & M. T. Fuhlderwanken:

I had already tried disabling AV, as well clearing trash and temp folders. Always no joy. Even though the only process with disk activity is System, the file/folder becomes available in a minute, or so.

The "Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing" option on my test machine has been disabled for a few days and so far explorer issues seem to narrow down to folders containing exe's. I mean, the exe file is fully editable, I can move, delete or rename it, but if I do that the folder in which the file is, even a newly created one, freezes. Trying to rename it invariably gives the "file in use" error. It is not a long wait, just the time to grab a drink or play some chords at the piano, but it's something I'd like to understand or, even better, to fix.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012 11:26 AM

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I just tried that, opening an Explorer shortcut to a folder, six times, with that "separate process" option disabled. It still created a separate process with each instance. lol.

It looks like that option does little or nothing.

Wow, I hadn't noticed that - thank you for pointing it out. I've always done both (check the option, run Explorer from shortcuts) together, and thought that the option was responsible for the multiple separate processes.

That's interesting new news... Since things tend to work better for me than a lot of folks here, this implies that starting a separate new explorer.exe process every time you want to access a new folder can contribute to successful operation. I suppose that makes sense - all its data structures would of course be fully initialized each time.

If the "Run in separate process" setting does under some unspecified circumstances cause an Explorer window to run separately from the process that manages the desktop, that does still sound like a good idea as it would tend to stress the desktop management process less.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Edited by Noel Carboni Tuesday, December 18, 2012 8:01 PM

Tuesday, December 18, 2012 7:56 PM

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@Lurkout

I wanted to let you know that I tried the fix detailed in your post above on a Dell computer running Windows 7 Home Premium and it seems to have worked for me. The change was not instant but required a restart before it took effect. You have my appreciation.

Edited by suvonoge Monday, December 24, 2012 1:36 PM

Monday, December 24, 2012 1:34 PM

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Don't remember what forum I found this on but someone mentioned they turned off Use Sharing Wizard under view of folder options. I never had this issue with my hp that had windows 7 home premium 64 bit, but my fresh install on my newly built machine (same os) has this problem. Will have to wait and see how long this work around works for me. My UAC is and had been on default, so that workaround mentioned by MS eons ago doesn't work either, as well as most of the others I have seen in this monstrous discussion.

Friday, December 28, 2012 8:35 AM

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I can confirm that I have had this issue on Windows 8 ever since I have added a network location (not a network drive) pointing to a VM. When VM was off, the location couldn't be reached, and my explorer did not refresh. I have solved the problem by placing a shortcut to that location in Favorites, instead of having a network location in My Computer

Guys, It looks like I found a solution which worked in my case. I've got some network paths which I can use in my work place. I had the problem when I was out of my office. I've deleted those network path and everything now works good. It looks like Explorer experiences some problem with unreachable network places. In any case from the discussion it looks like a bug which can have multiple sources...Microsoft should do something about it.

Saturday, January 5, 2013 2:35 PM

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The registry fix proposed by Lurkout on 12/21/11 worked for me as soon as I closed the RegEdit window!

Thanks!

DanW52

Saturday, January 19, 2013 3:50 PM

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Friends, the bad news: this bug is on all Windows 7! To repeat it, try to open "documents library" and delete any file sorted by date in the middle of detailed view of any internal folder.
The good news: there is no bug, if you open target folder not via "documents library".
Also no this bug on Windows 8 and XP.

For more see demonstration:

http://img541.imageshack.us/img541/6341/windows7bug.gif

Thursday, January 24, 2013 5:45 PM

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It's never as simple as you might think. But I agree, the use of Libraries is one way to make it show up more often. I always advise using real folders on the disk, rooted in Computer. I even advise configuring the system so Libraries are hidden from showing up in Explorer.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Thursday, January 24, 2013 8:34 PM

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For the record, this worked for me.

Friday, January 25, 2013 6:15 PM

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Hi.

I have been running Win 7 for maybe 1.5 years on my current machine and about a week ago I started having the refresh problem. From what I can see there is no solution and microsoft appears to be indifferent to providing one. Rather, thier solution appears to be the introduction of a new OS.

Is that about it?

This is really disappointing.

ETA Found fix above. But the question remains why did this problem arise on my machine after over a years use?

Magic?

Edited by Ed in CT Thursday, February 7, 2013 1:36 PM

Monday, February 4, 2013 1:27 PM

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Hi everybody

I have spent over an hour to read all of the answers here. I of course face the same problems with refreshing etc which occurs often in my Win7 Ultimate x64.

In order to overcome this, I just performed a "Rebuild Icon Cache" using Stardock's Iconpackager. Immediately after the process completes (explorer.exe is restarted), everything turns back to normal so I can again copy/paste/delete/rename etc to view the updated contents, without hitting F5 (refresh).

This process actually deletes the hidden "IconCache.db" file.

To manually perform this (found by searching the internet), which is tested and works also :

Rebuilding the Icon Cache Database

1. Close all folder windows that are currently open.

2. Launch Task Manager using the CTRL+SHIFT+ESC key sequence, or by running taskmgr.exe.

3. In the Process tab, right-click on the Explorer.exe process and select End Process.

4. Click the End process button when asked for confirmation.

5. From the File menu of Task Manager, select New Task (Run…)

6. Type CMD.EXE, and click OK

7. In the Command Prompt window, type the commands one by one and press ENTER after each command:

CD /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local
DEL IconCache.db /a
EXIT

8. In Task Manager, click File, select New Task (Run…)

9. Type EXPLORER.EXE, and click OK

MS should fix this in any case

Worked for me.

The question remains: Why did the problem occur in the first place?

Thank you and thank you Noel for your amazing interest in this problem.

Thursday, February 7, 2013 1:21 PM

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Interesting. However, I wonder if the "active ingredient" is just the closing and restarting of Windows Explorer, as suggested by qwerty88 in an earlier post, and which I have found works.

However, on the principle of belt and braces, I've combined this and qwerty88's method into a single batch file. Call it <some name>.bat, save it and simply run it.

taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F
CD /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local
DEL IconCache.db /a
explorer.exe

I might add that the length of time that the original qwerty88 method stays active is quite variable.

Proposed as answer by Roxton_ Saturday, June 1, 2013 2:12 PM

Thursday, February 7, 2013 7:44 PM

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Hello to all participants in this never ending fight with MS... :)

I'd like to share my experience with this problem...

This problem started on 5 different computers in my domain, right after i installed Google Chrome.

My intention was to replace Mozilla Firefox with Google Chrome. After i uninstalled Firefox and installed Chrome,

the problems started... Just thought you guys would like to know...

I'm not sure the problem is with Chrome, but it looks suspicious to me... :|

I'm using Dydymos's bat file to get rid of the problem (thanks Dydymos :) )...

Hope this helps...

Friday, February 22, 2013 12:08 PM

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Hi,

I just want to add:

I'm having problems with Auto-refresh in Windows Explorer. I usually use detail view, and a lot of the times I sort by modified date. Using this setup, if I delete a file in a folder that is a part of a library, the file does not disappear until I do a manual refresh (F5).

But,
If I switch to alphabetical sort, then everything updates just fine.
I have of course screwed around with all sorts of fixes previously mentioned on this thread, and who knows if it was a combination of all of those plus changing the sort order, but at least that worked for me. Win 7 Pro 64, folder window in sep. precess, re-reg vbscript.dll, added Update key to reg, deleted icon cache.

And I agree, Microsoft needs to get the stuff together. Tired of being an IT admin without the pay... Shame on you MS!

pjpizza

Sunday, February 24, 2013 7:31 PM

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Last solution which is effective is to create a new user.

Everything will work perfectly.

Monday, March 11, 2013 1:39 AM

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Lurkout,,, Your fix "WORKS!!!"

Wednesday, March 13, 2013 1:24 PM

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The solution you proposed doesn't work for everybody....

As far I as know the problem is related to the Microsoft Windows Search Indexer...

When the option to index the content of the files is enabled, and the Indexer is processing content, unforeseen delays occur and the things you had to folders in Windows Explorer don't appear as you create them...

Preventing, the Indexer to index the content of your files (which is in my opinion really appropriate -- Get a really indexing software if you want to index content of your documents, or apply the attributes only to important folders) will resolve the issue...

All you need is to right-click on the root folder, click the Advanced button of the General Tab and deselect the "Allow files in this folder to have contents indexed in addition to the file properties"... And wait...

No need for editing the registry...

And don't wait for Microsoft to offer you a solution, they probably won't have any in the near future, as they now have to many unqualified developers working on their products and implementing shitty, unreliable and non-optimized features...

I wish I worked over there to tell them how they managed over the last 20 years to lower the quality standard of the whole software engineering community! Allowing bunch of nobodies to build software that don't work or need monstrous infrastructures!

Well have fun

--------------------------------------------------

I'm reposting this topic under a new thread because Microsoft has erroneously marked the previous thread as "Answered" and is either not paying attention to subsequent posts, or is ignoring the issue. Previous thread can be found under: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproui/thread/8afb8b65-900c-4f42-b1df-3c2394417b6e/

Restating the problem from joeboxer:

_____________________________________________________

This thread discusses the following glitches during file operations, in which file states are not properly updated until a manual refresh of the display (note from ppanish, in my case I don't believe a refresh resulted in an update of the displayed information):

After moving files: A) moved files do not disappear, or B), all moved files disappear but pop-ups report "Could not find this item" for each file.
After deleting files: deleted files do not disappear.
After renaming files: renamed files continue to show former filenames.
After creating a folder: created folder does not appear.
After emptying the Recycle Bin: emptied bin is not shown as empty.

__________________________________________________________________

The most successful resolution to this problem was presented by Deckard on 1/22/2010 as follows. Users please note, it is much faster to search for DontRefresh since these are the occurrences you're really interested in:

________________________________________________

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

________________________________________________________

Most of us have found that the exact number of registry keys and their specific handles will vary with installation, and generally a reboot is required for the fix to be effective.

This appears to be a widespread problem, and is extremely disruptive to use of the system with Windows 7. Hopefully this thread will result in Microsoft looking into this more seriously to define cause and solutions to the problem.

Wednesday, May 29, 2013 6:49 PM

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This worked for me. Instantly. I have no idea how but it works. Thanks.

Thursday, May 30, 2013 3:13 PM

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I solve the issue uninstall Google Chrome.

Thursday, June 13, 2013 12:21 PM

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Works for me - The instant you make this change the Folder Autorefresh works as expected.

Why does this not have more votes?

Tanks for the info.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013 5:37 PM

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Hi All

does this trick work also for network drive ?

Thanks

Friday, July 5, 2013 6:51 PM

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I had this problem and another symptom was that I couldn't manage drives because it was impossible to connect to virtual drive service. I resolved the problem unloading a DVD that was in the DVD drive, I still have to understand if the problem was the drive or the DVD.

So maybe the problem of "folder refresh" is related with the refresh of periferals. In windows logs there were many "bad block on cdrom0 device" entries.

Sunday, July 14, 2013 4:44 PM

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I also encountered this problem too... However, after I left the homegroup, everything seems to be perfectly normal. Maybe another simple workaround is to try leaving the homegroup. Thanks.

Proposed as answer by Krijn Swinnen Thursday, August 15, 2013 2:05 PM

Tuesday, July 16, 2013 1:53 PM

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I think I have come across a POSSIBLE solution for the Explorer auto-update (or lack thereof) problem discussed in this thread. This solution was casually mentioned by another poster (Nucleo) in Part 1 of this massive discussion as a fix used in Windows XP for a similar problem, but I tried the exact same fix in Win 7 64-bit, and it seems to work.

So far the solution is working 100% on my machine, which previously had severe problems with Explorer not updating almost any time I added, deleted, or moved files around. Hopefully it won't end up being some temporary fix that mysteriously reverts back.

The fix is to create a registry key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Update]
"UpdateMode"=dword:00000000

In other words, go into the Registry, and in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control, create a key called Update. Within that, make a DWORD value named UpdateMode with value 0.

On my machine, the problem instantly stopped when I added this key. Please try this fix and report back whether or not it works for you.

Unfortunately, although this worked for a number of people, it DID NOT WORK for me. Running Win7 Enterprise 32-bit.

I guess I will just have to keep on using my F5 key!

DA

Friday, August 30, 2013 5:18 PM

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

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Avoid using Libraries and your problems will be lessened.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Saturday, August 31, 2013 12:22 AM

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@ Deux_Anges

Your solution seemed to work for about 5 minutes, until I tried to empty the recycle bin and had to refresh to be sure it was emptied. As this is a hit and miss problem on my Win 7 64bit machine, I can't really know if it worked at all or not.

This problem has been around for years with no permanent universal fix and now we're into Windows 8! And some people wonder why those with enough money and common sense buy a MAC.

What's wrong with you Microsoft? You get people who pay for your software to waste countless hours troubleshooting problems you can't fix yourself...shame on you!

Oh yeah, I forgot. You count on beta testers to pay you to iron out your bugs and then wonder why people don't want to pay for your software! If I wasn't over 60 I'd learn Linux...might anyway.

Edited by Hellenback7 Sunday, September 8, 2013 1:12 AM

Sunday, September 8, 2013 12:49 AM