What are these brown box icons in left bottom corner of my files??

Anonymous
2022-03-07T21:29:56+00:00

Does anyone know where these small brown box icons came from and what they mean?? I suddenly have these little brown icons (looks like a small file box) on most of my files, Word, pdf, photos, etc. I've googled the daylights out of this and apparently lots of folks have the same question but no one has an answer. I hasn't affected my ability to open files but it's really annoying! (see pic below) Does it have something to do with my upgrade to Windows 11?

Thanks!

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Performance and system failures

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Anonymous
2022-04-23T00:35:08+00:00

Had this exact same issue today. The resolution was quick no reinstall. I'm on Win11, so perhaps that was a plus in this scenario. Here's the fix that worked for me:

  1. Open windows explorer <windows-key + e>
  2. If you're using OneDrive you should see something like "OneDrive - Personal" within the left-hand pane. If so, Right-Click to access the context-menu.
  3. You should see the menu-item: "Always keep on this device", select this.
  4. Recheck your desktop; no more brown boxes, yay!

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-06-08T00:00:12+00:00

    Just right click the mouse and click on "Refresh". They will go back to what they were.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-06-10T15:04:51+00:00

    I have had the same problem since I spoke with someone at Costco concierge about my new samsung laptop never charging to over 84%. She told me to run battery to zero, charge twice and third time should recalibrate. She also walked me through turning off and uninstalling a lot of adobe features and other seldom or never used features and one to prevent dropbox from automatically taking files off pc into dropbox. Since then brown box icons have appeared on ALL my pictures and jpg files and I can't open any of them on pc, desktop or in dropbox! I have already followed the above instructions. When I go to restore it does not give me the option to choose a date before I talked with this unhelpful person. I spoke to her 5/27/22 but earliest date it gives me as option even after choosing 'other' after first screen is 6/1/22.

    I also completely uninstalled OneDrive twice. I wasn't even using it to begin with . That didn't help either.

    What next?

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-06-13T01:08:09+00:00

    it worked yesterday but now the brown boxes are back and once again I can't open any pictures. I tried it a second time and now it doesn't work

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-06-30T12:28:35+00:00

    I just right click desktop and click refresh and it's fixed.

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