Many Windows users are encountering a typical problem in their PCs’ taskbar and desktop. Both the taskbar and desktop keep refreshing and a black screen appears. This issue has been found to occur after either a driver update or Windows Update. When the taskbar and desktop refresh, they keep blinking periodically after 3-4 seconds. When this bug occurs, the icons will not be visible for some time, unless you refresh it once again. You cannot even open the Task Manager by right clicking on the Taskbar. However, Task Manager can be opened by tapping the shortcuts (ALT+CTRL+DEL). If you notice high CPU usage, then it is obvious that the Files Explorer is crashing for some reasons.
Although the exact source of this bug is not yet known, but there is a plausibility that some third-party applications might have caused the issue. Whatever be the reason, the Taskbar and Desktop refreshing with a black screen is pretty annoying to be honest. Let’s see if there is a way to resolve the bug.
Here are some steps that you may find helpful:
- You can restore your system to an earlier restore point. This will revert the operating system to the old settings, old driver versions, old Windows versions.
- Uninstall any recently installed application. Check your control panel, and find which apps have been recently installed, or installed just before the issue started appearing. Uninstall them and restart the PC to check if the app was responsible for the bug.
- Clear Icon and Thumbnail Cache: The thumbnail and icon cache helps the desktop to load and run fast without any lag. Clear the cache and restart the File Explorer. The cache will build automatically. Here is the script which can serve this purpose. Run the cmdlet in PowerShell.
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe cd /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local attrib -h IconCache.db del /f IconCache.db cd /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer attrib -h thumbcache_*.db attrib -h iconcache_*.db del /f thumbcache_*.db del /f iconcache_*.db start explorer
4. Another potential option is to rollback the driver update. If it doesn’t solve the issue, you can delete the driver and install it once again from the specific manufacturer’s website.
That’s all!
