Windows 7 No desktop refresh?

tjazar

New Member
I noticed a problem on my Win7 desktop about a week or two ago. When I delete files or shortcuts, the icon remains on the desktop until I do a manual refresh. The Recycle Bin icon changes to full (if it was empty), and the file itself is actually no longer available on the desktop, but the icon won't disappear until I hit F5 or click Refresh.

Any ideas as to what may be causing this? I haven't done any updating of drivers since this started happening, so I don't think it's a graphics driver problem, but of course, I could be wrong. Any help would be greatly appreciated, and thanks in advance.
 
Hello and welcome,.

That s very strange,.

I doubt it's driver related either.

Have you installed any new software lately or modified your system in any way (for example, through the registry)?'

Please fill out your computers specs in the User Control Panel here on the site as well. It will then appear next to your name. look at my posting and you'll see the drop-down arrow.
 
Well, I have installed software lately. A great deal, actually, from browsers (Firefox 3.5.1, Google Chrome, Chromium) to games (Half-Life 2 through Steam) to various utilities (GIMP, Google Earth, Windows Live Writer). I suppose it could be any one of these programs, but narrowing it down will be quite the time consumer.

As for registry edits, I don't think I've opened the registry once since installing the Release Candidate. I'm no stranger to making such edits, and any time I do I always make a backup just in case, but I can't think of any edits I've made to this install.
 
Hmm... the problem still exists, and now I may have found an additional bug. I just discovered that when I move an item from the Recycle Bin to the Desktop, the file name is corrupted but the file itself is not.

I wanted to test the desktop refresh bug to see if it still exists, so I deleted a file named "Proclamation.PDF" from my desktop. I still had to manually refresh to remove the icon, though the file did move to Recycle Bin. However, when I opened Recycle Bin and moved the file back to the desktop, it was renamed "$RWW28T8.PDF", and a small padlock is now in the lower left corner of the icon.

Any ideas, anybody? Think these two are related?

Also, is there a way to submit bugs to Microsoft and the Windows 7 team? The "Send Feedback" button is gone from RC, so I'm not sure how to report this.
 
not that i haveant explanation to offe ryet my curiosity is going. if you restore recycled items from other directories does the phenomenon manifest? how about other partitions each has it's own recycle folder the one on the desktop is like a library.finally how about the desktop for another user account (if you need to just create one temporarily),
 
@textureDnB:

I can confirm that problem does exist in other folders and on other partitions. However, I have discovered that it only occurs when I drag a file from the Recycle Bin to a folder; if I click "Restore this item", the filename is not corrupted and the padlock icon does not appear. Also, the problem does not exist at all on a new user account. Thanks for the ideas, this may give me an opportunity to figure out the cause of this problem. As always, though, and assistance will be greatly appreciated.
 
exceedingly weird unfortunately i have nothing for you other than that I tried to replicate this on my system and can confirm that it is not occuring therefore is probably not normal.it sounds like you have a workaround now by restoring rather than drag and drop but curiosity is burning.there is a clue in the user account thing, if your still hunting i would see what apps are not available to the new user one of those may be the culprit or else any difference in settings between the two especially in the folder options dialog box also in the properties of all partitions there is a tab for recycle bin space and settings some comparisons could be made there as well
 
Alright, so I just tried booting into Safe Mode, but every log on attempt rebooted the computer, so I started Windows normally. Now, the files and icons will delete just as they should, but dragging the files back from the Recycle Bin still corrupts the name and introduces the padlock icon. Also, I've included a screencap of a file restored from the Recycle Bin (by dragging), so anyone reading this can get an idea of what's going on.
 
The padlock (is believed) .. "Basically it's just there to state that the folder has restricted access to anyone but you"

As for the RecycleBin thing,,,, I would say, update to a newer 7 release. Or try reinstalling.
If you are still running RC, it is Beta. There is no point in trying to troubleshoot something that may already be fixed, or may not have the problem in a new version.
 
So, I finally found out what has been causing this problem: TeraCopy 2.0 beta. I had enabled TeraCopy to be the default copy handler instead of Explorer, and once I disabled that preference, my Desktop and Recycle Bin problems disappeared. Of course, this is after I created a new user account and was just about to delete the old one, so I've also learned that the Mozilla Weave add-on for Firefox is handy for migrating bookmarks and passwords to another computer (or account, for that matter).

For anyone still having a problem similar to mine, are using TeraCopy? I see there is a more recent version available, but I may just hold off on downloading that for now. I'll just let Explorer take care of file copy operations for the time being. Thanks to all who helped.
 
Glad you got it sorted! New you'd figure it out thanks for posting back your solution so others may benefit as well there is not enough of that on boards like this..
 
I have seen this issue before though with drag and drop from the recycle bin to a different location than the file was originally deleted from. This is because, when you delete the file, it gives it a placer name that basically means the file is ready for deletion.

My theory anyway.

And when you do the drag and drop (instead of restore) it copies it out with the replacement name instead.
I do not believe this to be a bug per say (??whatever), just not what should be intended. But I guess that's the definition of a bug, eh?
 
Oh no! So, the Recycle Bin still works like a charm, but the desktop refresh bug has resurfaced! (By the way, I've gone back to using my original user account.) It seems that Windows Live Mail may be to blame. In the process of typing this post, I closed WLM, and the problem ceased. I have since restarted the application, and the problem has yet to resurface. Curious...
 
I have the same issue as you, I don't use windows live mail, I use MSN however. Also this problem goes away once you restart but comes back randomly...
 
I'd like to add my solution:

All the programs I had installed didn't try to replace any Windows functions, so I decided to look elsewhere. Reverting the Windows 7 theme back to the default solved the problem completely. After further digging, I found it was because I had changed the default icon for the recycling bin (Right click -> Personalize -> Change Desktop Icons). Revering back to the default icon solved my issue.

Hope this helps someone.
 
I have this same issue, with the desktop and other folders not refreshing automatically, and I have never heard of a program called TerraCopy, nor is there any "dontrefresh" tag in my registry. It doesn't refresh on my desktop or any folder that grows beyond a certain size. Not sure if it's the size of the folder, or the # of items in it or what, just know they get to a point where it stops working. This has occurred on every version of windows 7 I have tested it on so far, home32, pro32, and pro64. The only thing I can think of that might be at fault is I always turn off indexing because of how laggy that makes me.

...and yes, dragging a file out of the trash and it changing the name, IS a bug, whether they admit to it or not.

So many stupid things done to this OS, I really have no idea what they were thinking.
 
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I have been using Teracopy forever and never had a problem. This post is very old though so I doubt the original poster will respond.
 
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