'Homegroup' Icon?

I have been experimenting with Hotmail's successor 'Outlook' & Skydrive of late & I noticed an icon appeared on my desktop called 'Homegroup'. I'm guessing it has something to do with some form of Microsoft file sharing. It disappeared for a couple of days, but now has mysteriously re-appeared.

I have scanned my PC & I am pretty sure it isn't malware.

Has anyone else found this icon (see jpeg) on their desktop recently?

 

I just switched the PC off & then realised I needed to copy some files. On boot-up the enigmatic Homegroup icon has disappeared (again)!

Oh, so that's what it is! Well, my other computers aren't running Win 7, so that's not too much help to me. I think that it is strange that 18 months or so after I had this computer built for me that this icon has only started to appear/disappear recently.

 

As far as I would know...you have "turned on" this Homegroup option.

Try searching in Help and Support for how it works and in particular, how to turn it off.

 

Thanks for the reply. I have a strange feeling that this is linked somehow to Microsoft's changing of Hotmail to Outlook. Outlook is essentially a beta still I believe. I don't use Hotmail much so I upgraded to Outlook as I thought I will have to inevitably anyway. I also use Skydrive sometimes. It seems to appear/disappear after experimenting with the new Skydrive format.

The icon has disappeared again of late. I may ask on Microsoft Answers.


Dave

 

Yeah, I suppose it is a bit of a longshot. Skydrive is a bit glitchy of late though. I'm pretty sure the icon only appears when I have used Skydrive.

See attached thumbnails. AFAIK I haven't used a homegroup. Only one computer in my house actually uses Win 7. The others run Vista.

Definitely not. The icon is no longer visible on the desktop anyway.


Dave

 

I have a feeling that as I was experimenting with opening folders, particularly the 'Public' & 'Shared Favourites', which as you can see from the thumbnail, I don't actually use, it may have triggered some response & produced the icon. When I actually opened the icon it seemed to be a prompt to start to use Homegroup. That's all I can think of anyway.

Thanks for answering though.