Grey x's on all desktop icons Windows 8.1

Anonymous
2014-06-18T14:52:09+00:00

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.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Files, folders, and storage

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Anonymous
2015-03-19T17:30:16+00:00

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!

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  1. @CmdrKeene 90,631 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2016-01-01T15:08:37+00:00

    I don't think Rainbow Six modifies any of the icon overlay settings, but something definitely went wrong.  You can use the tool I mentioned on page 4 of this conversation to identify the culprit or even just outright disable the overlays in a single click.  The tool is AutoRuns and you can get it here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902

    Just open it up, go to the Explorer tab, and look for shell icon overlay handlers.  Uncheck the box and you'll see the overlays disappear immediately.  And you can even see which program is sending the icons to be shown.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-01-03T18:44:44+00:00

    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.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-01-03T18:58:26+00:00

    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?

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-01-03T21:47:04+00:00

    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.

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