Desktop icons not appearing until refresh

[Chsoriano]

So I noticed about a week or two ago that new icons created on my desktop were not appearing until I refreshed the desktop. I've heard of people having this problem on Windows Vista, but had never seen it myself until last week.

Does anyone have any idea what might cause this issue?

I've already tried going back to last month's driver for ATI Catalyst, which helped somewhat (instead of not appearing at all, they are just delayed by like 5 seconds).

EDIT: I forgot to mention, this doesn't only affect the desktop. For example, restoring an icon from the recycle bin. The file doesn't disappear from the recycle bin until I refresh the folder view.

Edited September 26, 2009 by Chsoriano

[Social]

Yeah I have this too sometimes on windows 7 32 and 64 bit. When I remove something from the desktop; it's gone but the icon is still there for a while.

[mls67]

same problem. It didn't happen until I did a fresh install. My old install never had that problem. Same specs.

[BetaAddict]

Never experienced this before. Could be some program that you installed that caused it to get buggy, especially if you use certain cleaning tools.

[Chsoriano]

Well I've never used any cleaning tools... the only things I have installed recently (that I can remember) are Batman Arkham Asylum, CCC 9.9, Visual C++ Redistributables 2005/2008 for some games, etc. and that's about it.

[ajua]

I have seen this a couple of times in Vista and 7. Maybe it has to do with graphics drivers as doing a desktop refresh stops showing those moved/deleted items.

I haven't seen that newly created items won't show, however.

[Chsoriano]

  ajua said:

I have seen this a couple of times in Vista and 7. Maybe it has to do with graphics drivers as doing a desktop refresh stops showing those moved/deleted items.

I haven't seen that newly created items won't show, however.

Yeah, I'm kind of guessing it has something to do with that. But I already went back to a version I knew was working, and I don't think it fixed it. Well, I guess it change the behavior a bit. Instead of not appearing until I refreshed the desktop, they just started appearing after about 5 to 10 seconds.

[Y2Stu]

im getting the exact same with Win7 RTM x64. Only recently started to happen tho.

[Ryan2g]

I was reading this topic the other day, didn't happen to me.

Now, it's doing it with the recycle bin.

[Chsoriano]

  Ryan2g said:

I was reading this topic the other day, didn't happen to me.

Now, it's doing it with the recycle bin.

Oh noes... hope it's not contagious :\

Okay, not funny... one (other) thing I noticed is that if you reset the folder views (Folder and Search Options > "View" > "Reset Folders") it makes them work but it's not a permanent fix. At least it wasn't for me. You could try it I suppose. Wouldn't hurt much unless you've gotten all your folder views set up how you like them.

[devHead]

  Ryan2g said:

I was reading this topic the other day, didn't happen to me.

Now, it's doing it with the recycle bin.

I've noticed this is the case with my Recycle Bin only when I use custom icons for them. When they are the default, it always refreshes when I empty it.

[omganinja]

I've experienced this on the desktop in both Vista and 7. Happened today actually, it's quite annoying.

[Ryan2g]

  devHead said:

I've noticed this is the case with my Recycle Bin only when I use custom icons for them. When they are the default, it always refreshes when I empty it.

Interesting, I also recently started using a custom icon for it. I'll try using the default for a couple of hours, see what happens.

[MagicAndre1981]

  omganinja said:

I've experienced this on the desktop in both Vista and 7.

for Vista, try to request Hotfix: KB973521 - Desktop does not refresh when you rename and then immediately delete a file on the desktop of a computer that is running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008