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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!
I have found the answer to removing these gray X's that overlay the windows desktop icons. It is part of Norton's backup settings. Go to your Norton click on Settings - Backup Settings - Backup Status Overlays - make sure it is turned off.
Hope this helps.
Glenn
Hi Dylan,
Have you already taken the actions mentioned above?
How do I resolve this issue..?
Why is it suddenly doing that over the past two weeks when it never did it before? I've not changed my Norton settings in the 7 months it's been on this computer. How do I make it stop?
Your back up probably hasn't had any problem in the past few months. This indicator is trying to tell you something. In this case it is specifically trying to tell you that these files have not been backed up successfully in the past few back up runs. For more I would contact Norton or take a look at the settings.
I never had Norton but still got the annoying "x". I had a computer probelm. MSFT Tech support help me re-installed the OS. Then the annoying "x" appear almost everywhere. I fixed most of them by re-installing affected SW/apps but four.
