Symbolic link issues on Laravel/Homestead/Windows

I'm having problems displaying images stored in the storage folder. At the moment all file uploads are configured to end up in the following folder:

storage\app\public

And I'm trying to access them as follows:

http://homestead.vaniloapp-demo/storage/6/testimage.jpg

However, this results in a 404.

If I run: php artisan storage:link I get the following error message:

"The "public/storage" directory already exists."

I have tied a bunch of different tips and tricks from various other threads including unlinking the public folder using unlink storage and then attempting to link it again manually using ln -s ../storage/app/public storage but that results in the following error:

"failed to create symbolic link 'storage': Protocol error"

Have tried using Sudo, have tied launching CMD as Administrator.

I'm running Homestead and Vagrant for Windows.

Thanks in advance!

Mika

Here are the best steps I've come up with

1. Unlink storage on your current Vagrant instance
2. Halt vagrant vagrant halt
3. Run CMD/Terminal as Administration (Right click > Run as administrator)
4. Go to your Homestead folder and start vagrant vagrant up --provision
5. SSH into vagrant vagrant ssh while still in the same CMD/Terminal
6. CD into your Laravel directory and run php artisan storage:link

I've seen people have issues while the vagrant box has not been started in the CMD administration mode.

Hope this helps.