Mysterious green checkmarks on desktop

Malwarebytes says their products do not do this. And I have never had Norton, or any other AV other than the ones I posted in the OP.

Carbonite is another backup program that uses these exact green check marks if the "mark files" setting is on.

Think Knowhow Cloud does this also if you have this. (UK Cloud Program for PCWORLD)

Norton backup does it as well.

I have found this to be transient in nature, sometimes I get the shortcut arrow , sometimes a green checkbox, and sometimes another icon. I don't think it has anything to do with the backup software nor OneDrive. I run neither. Refreshing the desktop does a reset back to the shortcut arrow but the anomaly recurs every so often. It'd be nice to have a permanent fix for this.

Same situation as philostow, shortcut icons change from arrow to either nothing, a grey x or a green dot with checkmark. Never had any of the various programs suggested here. It happens to my machine multiple times a day and a refresh command always gets the default arrow back. I've checked the Registry entry that governs this and it's set to arrow and retains that setting even when the arrows are missing or replaced.

At this point I've decided to log the state of the Desktop and as soon as I notice it has changed I plan to use Nirsoft's Last Activity View and see if I can tell what processed have run since the change. Maybe it's some other program or activity built into Win10.

Microsoft, where are you? Fix your code.

I don't have onedrive or norton installed. People have been complaining about this issue for years. MS has done nothing.