File Explorer stopped refreshing

Until yesterday, when I deleted a file shown in File Explorer, it immediately vanished. But now, deleted files won’t go away until I right-click on a blank space and click Refresh. Same with renamed files.

I did a SFC /scannow, which found some problems and corrected them, but it didn’t solve this one.

From what I’m seeing on the web, this is a common problem, but the ‘fixes’ mentioned didn’t work, short of a registry edit.
Does anyone know of a fix?
(Win 10 1809, 9GB RAM, i7 CPU, 5TB HDD space available)

Do you maintain restore points?

This is explorer bug which dates back to XP days. There is no solution and the only easy way is a reboot.
It has been reported a million times and you can spend days going through the temporary solutions.

The Pool Man said:

Do you maintain restore points?

Yes, and I have a restore point from just a day or two before this started. I'm going to try that tonight. Thanks.

- - - Updated - - -

Just finished system restore from two days before the problem began. Still doesn't immediately refresh.

Thanks for the suggestion, Spunk. That sounds a bit drastic for the issue, but when it becomes annoying enough to justify, and when I have the time and patience to try it, it may be the next step.

For the record, this article worked for me. I started experiencing the no-refresh issue a few weeks ago. No other solutions I found seemed to work, but this worked!

How to Fix it When the Desktop/File Explorer Won’t Automatically Refresh in Windows 10/8/7 | scootercomputers

Basically do the following:

1. Delete all the files inside %AppData%\Microsoft\windows\recent\automaticdestinations
2. Delete all the files inside %AppData%\Microsoft\windows\recent\customdestinations
3. Restart your PC.

To quote the article why this seems to happen:

Explorer was getting hung up due to network folders I had in my Quick Access that were no longer online. Apparently, if the computer or network that contains those folders goes offline, sometimes Windows shits the bed and just can’t accept the fact that those folders are not currently accessible and can’t proceed normally without them. Nope, it seems that Explorer just keeps on looking for these offline folders forever and ever no matter how long they’ve been offline, which somehow breaks Explorer’s ability to automatically refresh whenever you make any changes to your local folders and files.

jrobinson007 said:

Basically do the following:

1. Delete all the files inside %AppData%\Microsoft\windows\recent\automaticdestinations
2. Delete all the files inside %AppData%\Microsoft\windows\recent\customdestinations
3. Restart your PC. :

Thanks, JRobinson. It's been 7 frustrating months with this problem, and your post is much appreciated.

In my system (Windows10 1909), there was no %AppData%\Microsoft\windows\recent\... so I used a third party search app (Locate32) to find automatic destinations. I deleted all the files in that folder. After rebooting, the refresh is working correctly again. I'll try to remember to follow up in a few weeks to confirm if the fix is permanent.