diff --git a/packages/gatsby/src/utils/__tests__/node-manifest.ts b/packages/gatsby/src/utils/__tests__/node-manifest.ts
index 2c1aded68a754..beaee349369e0 100644
--- a/packages/gatsby/src/utils/__tests__/node-manifest.ts
+++ b/packages/gatsby/src/utils/__tests__/node-manifest.ts
@@ -12,6 +12,10 @@ import {
   processNodeManifests,
 } from "../node-manifest"
 
+function itWindows(name: string, fn: () => void): void {
+  return process.platform === `win32` ? it(name, fn) : xit(name, fn)
+}
+
 jest.mock(`fs-extra`, () => {
   return {
     ensureDir: jest.fn(),
@@ -342,4 +346,57 @@ describe(`processNodeManifests`, () => {
     await testProcessNodeManifests()
     process.env.NODE_ENV = `test`
   })
+
+  itWindows(`replaces reserved Windows characters with a dash`, async () => {
+    const nodes = [
+      { id: `1`, usePageContextId: true },
+      { id: `2`, useOwnerNodeId: true },
+      { id: `3`, useQueryTracking: true },
+    ]
+    mockGetNodes(
+      new Map(nodes.map(node => [`${node.id}`, { id: `${node.id}` }]))
+    )
+
+    store.getState.mockImplementation(() => {
+      return {
+        ...storeState,
+        pages: new Map([
+          [
+            `/test`,
+            {
+              path: `/test`,
+              context: { id: `1` },
+            },
+          ],
+          [
+            `/test-2`,
+            {
+              path: `/test-2`,
+              context: { id: `2` },
+            },
+          ],
+        ]),
+        nodeManifests: [
+          {
+            pluginName: `test`,
+            node: { id: `1` },
+            // A manifest id containing all of the reserved windows characters that we check
+            // for and replace
+            manifestId: `\\*"<>/:?|`,
+          },
+        ],
+        queries: {
+          byNode: new Map([
+            [`1`, new Set([`/test`, `/test-2`])],
+            [`2`, new Set([`/test`, `/test-2`])],
+          ]),
+        },
+      }
+    })
+
+    await processNodeManifests()
+    const nodeManifestFileName = path.basename(fs.writeJSON.mock.calls[0][0])
+
+    expect(nodeManifestFileName).toEqual(`---------.json`)
+  })
 })
diff --git a/packages/gatsby/src/utils/node-manifest.ts b/packages/gatsby/src/utils/node-manifest.ts
index 9f6290e941715..58ddd0b66dcab 100644
--- a/packages/gatsby/src/utils/node-manifest.ts
+++ b/packages/gatsby/src/utils/node-manifest.ts
@@ -278,13 +278,33 @@ export async function processNodeManifest(
 
   const gatsbySiteDirectory = store.getState().program.directory
 
+  let fileNameBase = inputManifest.manifestId
+
+  /**
+   * Windows has a handful of special/reserved characters that are not valid in a file path
+   * @reference https://superuser.com/questions/358855/what-characters-are-safe-in-cross-platform-file-names-for-linux-windows-and-os
+   *
+   * The two exceptions to the list linked above are
+   * - the colon that is part of the hard disk partition name at the beginning of a file path (i.e. C:)
+   * - backslashes. We don't want to replace backslashes because those are used to delineate what the actual file path is
+   *
+   * During local development, node manifests can be written to disk but are generally unused as they are only used
+   * for Content Sync which runs in Gatsby Cloud. Gatsby cloud is a Linux environment in which these special chars are valid in
+   * filepaths. To avoid errors on Windows, we replace all instances of the special chars in the filepath (with the exception of the
+   * hard disk partition name) with "-" to ensure that local Windows development setups do not break when attempting
+   * to write one of these manifests to disk.
+   */
+  if (process.platform === `win32`) {
+    fileNameBase = fileNameBase.replace(/:|\/|\*|\?|"|<|>|\||\\/g, `-`)
+  }
+
   // write out the manifest file
   const manifestFilePath = path.join(
     gatsbySiteDirectory,
     `public`,
     `__node-manifests`,
     inputManifest.pluginName,
-    `${inputManifest.manifestId}.json`
+    `${fileNameBase}.json`
   )
 
   const manifestFileDir = path.dirname(manifestFilePath)