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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!
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.
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.
Shawn - unfortunately you are wrong about Norton. I have Carbonite installed and have never installed Norton. I still get the "Grey-X" all the time. A desktop refresh immediately banishes them, but only for a short while.
Perhaps the "Grey-X" is a "Universal Backup Status Indicator" ? Possibly part of the Windows system software accessed by 3rd party Vendors for their Backup Engines?
Norton isn't the only service that provides it. Mozy online backup also shows indicator icons like this (but different style as explained on their site here). Carbonite has the similar icons. If you open the carbonite help file it explains how to turn them on and off. Also if you contact Carbonite they explain (although they have no KB article about it) that they are aware of an issue where if you use Carbonite+DropBox, it reserves more overlay icons than the OS can handle (15 is the max), and you'll see the wrong overlays applied. The only known solution is to turn them off using the tools I mentioned above like AutoRuns to disable them from ever loading into the system in the first place. But it's not part of Windows or anything with Windows system, never has, never will be.
