Explorer (Desktop) Stops Refreshing

If you are having this problem specifically on Windows 7 (and by extension, Vista), then one of the most likely reasons is that the Windows Management Instrumentation service is not running. I have experienced this issue on 7 and after some testing, determined that Explorer does not automatically update on file-operations if the service is not running, and that starting it will resolve the issue.

1. Open the Services MMC snap-in (services.msc)
2. Make sure that Windows Management Instrumentation is running (start it if it is not)
3. Make sure it is also set to Automatic start-up

(Don’t mix it up with Windows Management Instrumentation Driver Extensions which has no impact on this problem.)

Sadly, this does not fix the same problem of Explorer not refreshing on Windows XP. That is a mystery I am still investigating…

I've solved this problem deleting iconcache.db file.

1. Open your task manager and kill the explorer process
2. Then choose File->New Task (Run), type cmd and press Enter.

In Command Prompt, use the following commands:

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

And then use Task Manager to open application explorer.exe

I you feel lazy / not comfortable with this I've written a simple application that takes care of the problem for my friends.

You can download it here

If you don't trust it here's its source code too.

I found that the problem corrects itself if I close all instances of Windows Explorer. Upon reopening Explorer, everything refreshes correctly.