I encountered an issue with Win 7 today where the folder wasn't refreshing automatically and I had to press F5 for that.
To resolve the issue, I tried this and it worked:
Go to "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{BDEADE7F-C265-11D0-BCED-00A0C90AB50F}\Instance", look out for a DWORD value called "DontRefresh" which is set to "1" (on). Change the value to "0" (off). This re-enables the refresh. Note that the CLSID given above may depend on your machine. The easiest solution if you can't find the key is to just go to "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID", hit "F3" and do a search for "DontRefresh".