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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!
It's not the Windows backup, it doesn't have that ability. Many things do though, including software pre-installed by PC makers that Microsoft doesn't know about. Norton for example, very famous for drawing those grey X icons everywhere. So if you have Norton, that's one to check. But it could be one of a billion programs, so you'll have to find which one it is.
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.
It's NOT a Carbonite issue. I don't use Carbonite and my desktop icons have the x's as well. It may be a backup issue as I did a manual backup just before they appeared.
That worked with Windows 8,1. But with Windows 10, my experience has been that if you create a folder, or copy a folder, with the same name as a folder already in OneDrive--either created there by you or by another computer on the network--you will get red 'X's. You need to change the name of the folder to something else. Until you do, you will continue to get red 'X's.
Hello everyone after researching I did not find the answer, however, I found it on my own.
What you need to do is disconnect from your onedrive account, and connect again.
Obviously, something has gone bad with the synchronisation between your local files and microsoft's onedrive backup servers. After doing this the X's are once again gone.
You're welcome.
i just right click and hit refresh on the desktop and they go away. still doesnt solve why they happen. maybe its displayfusion. anyone else running displayfusion?
