What to do if desktop icons are flashing in Windows 10

by Aleksandar Ognjanovic

Troubleshooting Expert

Last update:March 3, 2021

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Flashing desktop icons was quite proeminent on one of the older Windows 10 iterations, as an update brought the calamity to the users.

The future patches seemingly resolved it, but some users are still bothered by this annoying issue that is hard to ignore and can actually completely mess up your system.

User reports state that they are unable to do a thing on their PC as soon as desktop icons start flashing in Windows 10. With that in mind, here are some solutions we suggest following to pursuit the resolution.

How do I fix the desktop icon flashing on Windows 10?

1. Run SFC and DISM
2. Check GPU drivers
3. Edit the registry
4. Change the Wallpaper

1. Run SFC and DISM

1. In the Windows Search bar, type cmd.
2. Right-click the Command Prompt and run it as an administrator.
3. In the command line, type the following command and press Enter: sfc/scannow
4. After it’s done, in the same window, type the following commands and press Enter after each: DISM/online/Cleanup-Image/ScanHealth DISM/Online/Cleanup-Image/RestoreHealth
5. Reboot your PC when everything ends.

Firstly, restart your PC. If that doesn’t help, open Task Manager and kill Explorer.exe. Start it again and look for changes. If your desktop icons are still flashing, move forward with the troubleshooting.

Flashing desktop icons might look like a minor nuisance but the reason for isn’t always something neglectable. Namely, this might point towards a system corruption of some kind, so you’ll need to use SFC and DISM.

These are built-in tools run through the elevated Command Prompt and, while the System File Checker (SFC) is usually enough to deal with the majority of issues, we suggest running DISM as well.

2. Check GPU drivers

Run a System Scan to discover potential errors

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Another possible reason for flashing desktop icons is, among others, unfunctional software support for your display adapter. Generic drivers administered via Windows Update are, most of the time, not best-suited.

What you need to do is get yourself a proper driver provided by the GPU OEM. You can use Driverfix to automatically scan for the latest compatible driver for your GPU and other important software.

If you are a gamer, photo/video producer, or you deal daily with any kind of intensive visual workflows then you already know the importance of your graphics card (GPU). To make sure that everything goes smoothly and avoid any kind of GPU driver errors, be sure to use a complete driver update assistant that will solve your problems with just a couple of clicks, and we strongly recommend DriverFix. Follow these easy steps to safely update your drivers:

1. Download and install DriverFix.
2. Launch the software.
3. Wait for DriverFix to detect all your faulty drivers.
4. The application will now show you all the drivers that have issues, and you just need to select the ones you’d liked fixed.
5. Wait for the app to download and install the newest drivers.
6. Restart your PC for the changes to take effect.

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3. Edit the registry

1. Open Registry Editor from the Windows Search bar.
2. Backup your current registry state.
3. Navigate to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
4. Edit the values for the following values in this manner:
   • ForegroundFlashCount value to 1.
   • ForgroundLockTimeout value to 0.
5. Save changes and look for improvements.

Finally, if none of the previous steps helped you, we can try with a more complex approach. This is done by accessing the Registry Editor and replacing editing a few inputs.

Have in mind that meddling with the registry can cause a lot of issues and is by no means suggested doing before creating a system restore point and backing up your registry.

4. Change the wallpaper

1. Select the image that you want to set as a background.
2. Right-Click on it.
3. From the selection menu, select Set as desktop background.
   
4. Check if the problem persists.

Some users resolved the issue in the simplest of manners. They either used another wallpaper for the desktop background or changed the format of the current one.

The JPG format is seemingly causing some issues with the desktop, so users renamed the image at hand to the JPEG format, and that sort it out.

With that said, we can conclude this article. In case you have any additional questions or suggestions, do us a favor and post them in the comments section below.

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