Windows 7 is a great OS, hands down it’s the best I’ve ever used and to date I’ve had no problems with it, until now…… For some reason beyond me, every so often my laptop decides to be stubborn and just refuses to auto-refresh the desktop.
Now what do I mean by this? Well say I have a folder on my desktop, I delete it, but it remains there. The folder itself is actually deleted, but the folder icon is still there. It’s the same story when I go into my documents when I rename files or add new ones etc… it does actually change, but you can’t see the change.
This has really been irritating me as of late and in the past I had to do a full restart to fix the problem. After scouring the web to see if there was a solution for this, and finding nothing but dead ends, i’ve decided to develop my own solution.
What it involves is stopping the “explorer.exe” process, and then restarting it again.
Before I go into how to do this, can I just point out that this isn’t a permanent solution, it just prevents you from doing a full restart to fix it when it happens.
So first off we need to kill the explorer.exe process, now this can be done via the task manager, or what I like to do is the following
- Open the start menu
- Hold down Shift and Ctrl
- Right click on a blank area of the taskbar
- A new window will pop up, then select exit explorer
Now this will kill the explorer.exe process and you will see your taskbar disappear, don’t panic, it will be back in a minute.
Now to restart it we need to access the task manager by going Ctrl+Alt+Delete
Next go to File -> New Task and then enter explorer.exe into the box that appears and hit enter.
You’re explorer.exe process will then start up again and you will have your taskbar back and with a bit of luck your desktop is back to auto-refreshing as normal.
Maybe I’m just unlucky, but has anyone else had this problem with there machines? If so how often does it happen to you? I’m getting it maybe twice a week
Let me know in the comments below
I have seen the same problem, but hitting F5 to refresh or right clicking and choosing Refresh from the right click menu did the trick for me. But then again, I don’t use any programs that allow edits to or alter Explorer. I have seen many posts on this website that talk about handy little programs and utilities that “make things easier” to manipulate in Explorer, but my experience has been that those utilities just break Windows after a while.
Hitting refresh and F5 works only temporarily, as soon as you change something again, you have to manually refresh each time. The only way I can solve it is to either restart or do the above steps
to open the task manager in 7 it’s ctrl+shift+escape.
As Jnelsoncpath mentioned earlier, I too have had the same problem a few times, (maybe once a month) but hitting refresh usually fixes it. I have also experienced this issue when changing the icon on a folder with an icon thats not in the imageres.dll file.
yes that works as well, but you can also access it with ctrl+alt+delete which is what people are more familiar with
At last!! someone else with this problem, i was starting to think i was the only one, thanks for the tip, but im really hoping MS will fix this in SP1, I get this problem a lot more than twice a week, pretty much all the time in fact. I have Win7 HP 64bit.
I was thinking I was the only one as well! I’m also using Windows 7 HP 64bit
Just wanting to add that I’m also suffering from this problem. You’re not alone at all. But I have no idea what causes it. I’m not running any programs that should modify these kind of things (except maybe Dropbox for its auto-syncing when something changes).
[addition] But I’m not using windows 7 HP 64 bit, I’m using the 32-bit version.
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/repair-fix-windows-7-vista-problems-with-fixwin-utility
Try this one. No problems that I can see with Windows 7.
Are U fed up with Windows Explorer not responding ?This guide is going to show you how to restart Explorer from the Desktop Context Menu.
This is really handy if, like me, you customise Windows a lot. If you have to restart Explorer for a Start Orb to change or for a theme to display correctly. Whatever the need, this sure is handy to have on tap.
Download this .zip file. contains everything you need. http://www.mediafire.com/?h1hdnzmmzh1
Step 1.
Extract the Restart Explorer.bat file and put it away somewhere safe (like your Documents folder). You may need to unblock it in the file’s properties.
Step 2.
Extract the Install_Restart_Explorer.reg file. Right click it and choose; Edit.
This will open up the .reg file ready for editing in Notepad.
You’ll notice at the bottom of the file, the path for the Restart Explorer.bat file is incorrect. Replace my path with yours. From ur recently downloaded zip file,find a home for the batch file [i choose to keep mine hidden] and ammend the .reg file to suit
Go to File > Save when you have finished and Exit Notepad.
It is already a widely known, debated (and hated) issue about windows 7.
Take a look here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproui/thread/8afb8b65-900c-4f42-b1df-3c2394417b6e/
Affected people are getting really annoyed and tired of Win7 about this matter
“You’re” = “Your” ???? O_O
So sad that MS had not got a solution for this bug yet……its been almost 9 months i’m having this irritating problem. F5 only temporarily fixes it, once another change is done you need to hit F5 again, unless i restart my PC.
muy bueno cuando te ataca el virus ataca principalmente a los archivos de explorer.exe te dejo 10+ por tu post
I have seen the same problem
Worked like a charm!
Thank you
Hi. I think I have the permanent solution for that and I discovered it by accident when I was experimenting with my desktop.
The solution: You have to run 2 processes of explorer.exe
1) To do that, open any folder on your hard disk.
2) click on “Organize”
3) Select “Folder and search options”
4) Click on “View” tab
5) Under “Advanced settings”, check “launch folder windows in a separate process”
6) Restart explorer.exe
That’s it. Hope this helps.
-AJ
txs dude
it’s working
didn’t work for me