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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.
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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!
It happened to me this afternoon, refreshing the desktop did the job.
Regards!
Hi, Christian here from Boxcryptor,
we've investigated this issue some time ago and could not find a direct link of this issue to our app. As a matter of fact, we were able to get the same issue with and without Boxcryptor installed. The icons themselfes are not from us, either - we tracked them down to OneDrive directly, if I remember correctly.
What seems likely is that, by uninstalling Boxcryptor, a lot of Windows-internal caches get flushed, which resolves the issue as a side effect.
To better understand the real origin of the issue, it would help to get some insider info from an OneDrive developer about the conditions at which the grey x's appear.
Best regards,
Christian
I had the same problem. The x's were in the area where Carbonite usually put their green dots indicating the backup was done. I contacted Carbonite and this was their reply:
I see that you are inquiring about grey X's replacing your Carbonite dots. This is due to an update done by the program "Dropbox". Dropbox uses Icon Overlays the same way Carbonite does with dots in order to display the status of a file. Windows allows for 12 registry entries to be active for Icon Overlays. The new Dropbox update is now using 10 of these slots and Carbonite needs at least 3 to run. This update has pushed Carbonite's dots out of priority. Our suggestion is to either contact Dropbox support for assistance with editing your registry to allow Carbonite through, or to uninstall Dropbox if you do not use it.
I uninstalled Dropbox and the x's were gone!
The problem certainly lies in One Drive. I too removed it and got rid of the Xs. Problem is I use One Drive and as the previous person describes, it does actually work.
This started after I purchased a new hard drive and did a clean install of Windows 10. Previously it was working just fine and had green check marks on all backed up files. Now they are replaced with a grey X. As previously mentioned, One Drive IS synced, and all files are working, but it is definitely scary to see the Xs!
Microsoft where are you and why haven't you provided a clear answer!
