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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!
Yes, this does actually work. I was reading through the replies, didn't really want to do any of the listed fixes since some of them were computer dependent. However, a simple right click on the desktop and clicking "Refresh" got rid of the issue for me. Thank you, madLyfe.
Like others in this thread, I don't use Carbonite nor Norton nor most other stuff, and the "easy" fixes did not fix it.
I did however find the culprit in my situation: OneDrive.
Not the "4 business" as I don't use it but the default Windows 10 OneDrive. I had relocated my Desktop into a folder in OneDrive, so I could keep it automatically backed up, and it worked for some time but suddenly started showing those gray X's. I only had this folder synched on this computer, so it could not be conflicts or any other thing, and files added would sync online. So I relocated my desktop back to the non-onedrive location and the problem went away. So, in my case at least, it was no third party app, but regular Microsoft stuff, after all.
I then relocated my desktop back to the OneDrive folder and, BAM, gray Xs are back! So I guess that I'll have to use a different way to do this, as these icon overlays really get in my nerves.
FTR: it DOES synchronize the files and changes to them! If only it would not show those Xs or if I could know what they mean and how to handle them! Also, there are ZERO synch problems, and OneDrive simply says it's "up to date"...
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!
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!
