crop is not lit up and what are the stars while editing

The ‘Gold Stars’ is an icon informing you that AI processing is in progress. 

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are you seeing gold stars on your bottom list of photos?

I’m not sure what you’re referring to. Please post a full-resolution screen shot of the entire LR window (not a phone pic).

Moderators, ​@Rikk Flohr_Photography, ​@Sameer K, please merge with this thread:

https://community.adobe.com/questions-675/p-crop-is-being-performed-when-the-transform-tool-is-synced-between-images-664539/index2.html?postid=664539#post664539

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when editing photos and trying to save edits to several photos at once, the crop sign is blanked out

I’m assuming that you’re using the Copy Settings or the Synchronize Settings commands.  When you’ve selected Upright Transforms or Manual Transform, the Crop option is always checked and greyed out:

This change in behavior was introduced in LR 15, and Adobe has pronounced it “as designed” without any justification for why the design was changed in 15.0.

https://community.adobe.com/questions-675/p-crop-is-being-performed-when-the-transform-tool-is-synced-between-images-664539/index2.html?postid=7541171#post7541171

If you don’t need to copy Transform, then uncheck it, and you’ll also be able to uncheck Crop.  If you need to copy Transform without copying Crop, see these workarounds:

https://community.adobe.com/questions-675/p-crop-is-being-performed-when-the-transform-tool-is-synced-between-images-664539/index2.html?postid=7541304#post7541304