Windows 7 Won't Refresh - How to fix

If your Windows 7 Explorer or Desktop does not refresh when you move or create files, here is a helpful trick I learned on The Windows Club.

Go to the Start Button and type "regedit" in the field that says Search programs and files. Then double-click on regedit under programs to open your Registry Editor.

This is what the Registry Editor looks like.

Press the "Ctrl" key and the letter "F" key at the same time to open the Find dialog box. In the "Find what" field, type "dontrefresh" and press the "Find Next" button.

Your Find result will probably look something like this. Notice that "Dontrefresh" has a value of 1. Double-click on "Dontrefresh" to open an editor.

In the editor dialog, change the 1 to 0 and press the "OK" button.

You will now see that "Dontrefresh" has a value of 0. You can now close the Registry Editor and your computer should refresh as you work.

Save Windows 7 Search Results as Text File

I recently had to create a list of over 3000 files that were dispersed amongst 60 folders. In the past, I would have used NirSoft's SysExporter, but unfortunately it does not work with Windows 7.

Fortunately, rummaging around in my internet, I found a simple way to make lists from Windows Searches. Here is a step by step guide.

Select the directory that you want to search:

Click images to enlarge

Enter your search:

Once you have your list, select all results and hold the Shift key and right-click on the list. Select "Copy as path" from the menu:

Now you can paste the results in a text document - here I have pasted the results in Excel (2007):

To get rid of all the path information, choose "Text to Columns" from the Data menu:

Then press the radio button for "Delimited":

And set the back-slash "\" as your delimiting value:

This will make the file name its own column:

And you can throw out all the path information and have a nice clean file list:

Adobe Lightroom - Corrupt Thumbnails

I just got a new Dell Optiplex 990 computer with an Intel Core i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40 GHz with 8.00 GB of RAM and 64-bit Windows 7 OS for image processing. It's fast.

I just processed 2 processed 2,297 .DNG files and exported them as Jpegs. Unfortunately, when I look at the thumbnails in Windows, this is how they look:

Click images to enlarge

I thought the files were corrupt and tried exporting them again - same result. When I opened the images the files seemed fine, but I didn't want to run the risk of corrupt thumbnails. Fortunately a post on SevenForums described the same phenomenon. Here is the solution:

Open Disk Cleanup (I just click on the Start Menu and type Disk Cleanup in the Search box).

Select the drive where you keep your thumbnails and press the OK button.

Check Thumbnails on the list of stuff to clean up (you may want to un-check all the other options) and press the OK button. This will delete all your thumbnails. When you reopen the folder your thumbnails will be fixed (they were never broken, but in the interest of speed, they were never drawn right in the first place).

"Fixed"

I hope this helps.

Preview RAW Formats in Windows 7 and XP

Here's a useful tool for anyone who wants to preview RAW image files in Windows 7: FastPicture Viewer Professional.

Once you install the trial, you will see you will be able to see your RAW images as thumbnails in Windows.