This is an interesting  Question, as a novice in PC world I will say " It’s a fact " , but now with years of  digging my head in this Binary machine , I can rectify those early days misconceptions, one being that  " Refreshing the Desktop   makes system go faster" , but let me clarify this thinking , we feel so because as we refresh again and again Windows responses quickly as we are doing the same thing again and again and we get a feeling that " OMG ! it’s getting faster " . I have also noticed as with me and several other computer users out there that we , tend to refresh the Desktop unknowingly or in a way to pretend that we are getting our computer ready for something  , like getting ourselves warmed before a sports event .

Actually the fact is that , Refreshing the desktop just redraws the icons and desktop screen again , so in case  you can see changes made to desktop recently ( like new icons,shortcuts etc .) they become visible . In no manner does it speeds up the system !! , it may happen that while you refresh repeatedly some background task may finish in the meantime and you feel that extra energy in your PC . So folks share your views regarding this, was I only the Dumb Guy , doing this in my early days or is it with you too ??