Explorer Refresh Problem - Tried Everything - Suggestions?

[remm]

Greetings. W764 Ultimate on laptop.

Problem: Rename a file in a folder on the desktop and it won't show the new name without a manual refresh... but the problem is not with every folder or file.

Bakground: This behavior started yesterday morning but in the past there were rare cases, such as copying an image file from a USB-connected camera to the DT... I'd have to navigate to the pic in Explorer as it would not show up on the DT even with a refresh. To get it to show on DT, I'd have to rename it in Explorer. Perhaps this was precursor behavior.

1. Folders are not part of a library
2. Happens in SAFE MODE with minimal boot, NO networking

Tried the following already to no avail:
1. sfc /scannow (integrity 100%)
2. REG DontRefresh set to 0 (changed to 1 then back to 0 to reset it)
3. disabled indexing
4. Event Logs showed some warnings in the "Known Folders" section of Windows Logs, which were all related to the OS looking for /Desktop /Favorites /Documents in the system32 directory when they actually exist in the SysWOW64 directory... so made junctions [mklink /j] to each one, which also did not fix the refresh behavior.

I am the only user on this laptop.

CLUE: Tried creating a new user acct then switched to it to test, and the behavior did NOT occur.

This leads me to believe my main user profile is corrupted [edit snipped].

EDIT: I no longer believe this as WEDR (Windows Explorer Doesn't Refresh) is a known bug from XP to W10 from what I understand. So will keep looking for a solution that works.

 

[Paul Black]

Hi remm,

CLUE: Tried creating a new user acct then switched to it to test, and the behavior did NOT occur.

This leads me to believe my main user profile is corrupted.

Have a look at this and see if it help! => Fix User Profile Service.

I hope this helps!

 

[remm]

Thanks Paul, it's not a corrupt account after all, (but I did look through that link and checked the REG and everything looks fine).

As it turns out, the refresh problem only happens when changing the case of a filename... which I learned from further research is some other rabbit hole I have to dig into... many are saying Windows sees (for example) "Cover.jog" and "cover.jpg" as the same, and so won't change the case, but that hasn't been my experience until this issue arose recently. All along it changed the filename just fine, even if I was only changing the case of one letter, and it refreshed immed. Now it needs a manual refresh for changing case, but if I change the name it refreshes normally.

If I find what's causing this behavior (in my case at least) I will post a followup with what worked for me.