Solved Windows 11 Pro Desktop not Refreshing

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Brandon Byrnes

PCHF Member
Jan 3, 2017
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Wisconsin
I've been having this problem for a while now. When i drag and drop a file to my desktop it won't appear on the desktop until I manually refresh the desktop. The same happens when deleting files, I will delete a file but it won't disappear from the desktop until i manually refresh it. I already tried going into the registry and changing the value of "DontRefresh" to 0 and that didn't work. Windows is fully updated and installed on a local drive, not a networked drive.
Speccy Report
 
any chance the Desktop folder is part of OneDrive or some other cloud service and it's just taking time to sync?
just a thought!
 
I actually uninstalled onedrive when i installed Windows, but I do have Mega and and Google Drive's native apps installed so maybe they are syncing with my desktop. I actually posted to the Microsoft community last night about this issue and someone said to try:
Open your Windows Explorer, then from the top menu,
Click on the three dotted icon (...) and select Options
From the pop-up window Folder Options
In Clear File Explorer history, click Clear
Then Uncheck the boxes for "Show recently used files in Quick Access" and "Show frequently used folders in Quick Access
Click Apply.
Click Restore Defaults and then click Ok.
Restart your computer afterwards and see if it solves your issue.

I did that and it didn't work. I'll check right now if Mega or Google Drive is syncing with my desktop.
 
I checked and it looks like I actually don't have Mega or Google Drive native apps installed. i must have uninstalled them at one point. I did have iCloud installed but as far as i know I didn't have it syncing with my pc, but to be safe I uninstalled that too but it didn't work.
 
smh, i didn't do it on each tab only the first tab. i missed the part where he said on each tab. I'll do that right now and then I'll post the minitoolbax results.
 
also i should mention. I don't have Onedrive installed, but I did at one point but uninstalled it. But If I go into the start menu and type OneDrive it shows up, clicking on it does nothing though. Also under This PC>Local Disk (C)>Users>"my user name" is a OneDrive Folder that contains Attachment, Desktop, Documants, Pictures and a few other folders and documents, all of them link to the relevant folders including the Desktop folder
Screenshot 2023-10-19 185629.png Screenshot 2023-10-19 185738.png
 
alright guys, this is crazy. On a hunch, i have no idea why I thought of this. I have been using Teracopy as my default program for transferring files. I decided to go ahead and uninstall teracopy and sure enough that worked. Now my files appear on my desktop when i save them or drag them there and they disappear right away when i delete them. I remember a few months ago I got a transfer error in Teracopy and I'm thinking maybe that is what was messing it up, but honestly i have no idea.
 
yes, and just to make 100% sure that was the problem I installed two other file transfer programs and they both worked fine. I reinstalled Teracopy and the problem came back. On the upside after uninstalling Teracopy I realized how fast the built in windows transfer is, so now I'm not even using a transfer program.
 
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