This browser is no longer supported.
Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Recently a client discover that all of their desktop icons (files and shortcuts) have large Grey X's in the corner on their Windows 8.1 home PC. The files are still accessible upon click through to them. They do not have a tape drive (one possible cause I have seen) and the shortcuts point to various locations on the primary C: drive (documents folder etc). Repairing the icon cache temporarily resolved but it seems to just come back again. They are running Carbonite as a backup, however a brief search of "Carbonite with Grey X's on icons" has not yet yielded anything either. Any help would be welcomed.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
I experienced the problem for the first time ever this morning in one of my laptops After tracking what I did this morning that might had caused it, I finally remembered to have installed an update for Boxcryptor. After uninstalling the Boxcryptor app, the grey X's disappeared from all those folder its was on. Bingo! Hope it helps!
Here's a screen shot from the 4th time the grey "X" appeared in the desktop icons just today.
I can confirm that those icons are from Carbonite, I've seen them before. It means that your backup has not completed (either because your paid carbonite subscription has expired, or because of a problem with your account). I would contact Carbonite to find out what has happened.
I have the recurring grex "X" appearing on my icons and have nothing to do with Carbonite. This has been a recurring problem only recently but no new software has been added to my system. Also, it doesn't affect all of my icons, about 80% of them. They all point to the primary C:drive so that is not a clue either. Finally, a desktop refresh does not remove them. I had to void the icon cache each time.
Thanks Shawn. I checked their subscription status and its good until July. Seems to be running OK with no error messages and files have been recently backed up and tested a quick notepad doc and sure enough Carbonite grabbed it and backed it up. If the backups are in order, perhaps their is a delay or something that is causing Carbonite to indicate the files as such? I did note that a desktop refresh seems to remove the x's as well.
