Refresh Windows Explorer in Win7
I figured out a way to check if the windows was a Windows Explorer window, and don't have enough of a rep to add a comment so thought I'd submit it as an answer to help you out because this question helped me out.
// based on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2488727/refresh-windows-explorer-in-win7
Guid CLSID_ShellApplication = new Guid("13709620-C279-11CE-A49E-444553540000");
Type shellApplicationType = Type.GetTypeFromCLSID(CLSID_ShellApplication, true);
object shellApplication = Activator.CreateInstance(shellApplicationType);
object windows = shellApplicationType.InvokeMember("Windows", System.Reflection.BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null, shellApplication, new object[] { });
Type windowsType = windows.GetType();
object count = windowsType.InvokeMember("Count", System.Reflection.BindingFlags.GetProperty, null, windows, null);
for (int i = 0; i < (int)count; i++)
{
object item = windowsType.InvokeMember("Item", System.Reflection.BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null, windows, new object[] { i });
Type itemType = item.GetType();
// only refresh windows explorers
string itemName = (string)itemType.InvokeMember("Name", System.Reflection.BindingFlags.GetProperty, null, item, null);
if (itemName == "Windows Explorer")
{
itemType.InvokeMember("Refresh", System.Reflection.BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null, item, null);
}
}
I don't know about Open/Save dialogs, but you can get a list of open explorer windows with COM automation, the Shell.Application object has a collection of windows, or CoCreate IID_IShellWindows directly, each window in the list has a refresh method.
WSH/JScript:
for(var sw=new ActiveXObject("Shell.Application").Windows(),i=0;i<sw.Count; ++i)
sw.Item(i).Refresh();
I don't know about C#, but here are examples dealing with shell windows in WSH/JScript and c++