Why does my mouse cursor change appearance

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missstang

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Apr 6, 2012
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Hello, I have windows 7 and this is very annoying to have the appearance of the cursor change- then randomly goes back to normal.

It takes anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes to change back.
Also- what causes this to happen in the first place??
 
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It goes from an arrow- to a double sided arrow with a little circle in the center.
It's so hard to click on a link or anything because of how the arrow is positioned.
Then out of nowhere it changes back.
 
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It happens on any site- anything. If I'm in my email, playing solitare, reading CNN: MSN; The New York Times: The New Yorker;
Nordstrom; makeup sites; workout sites; fitday.com...
 
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Oh--- no I'm sorry. I misunderstood you. Or I wasn't reading properly.
I'm on google chrome. and these are the only sites I go on . the only thing I use my home computer for.
 
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Two things to try:

1) change your cursor (type "cursor" into the Start Menu or find the Mouse Properties in the Control Panel)

2) Install or reinstall the recommended drivers for your mouse

Other:
- download, update and run Malwarebytes (free version) and Spybod search & destroy
 
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Have u figured this out yet. I started having the same issue recently. Thought it was a particular web site, as it started when I was using that site. But maybe not. The computer is also randomly locking up requiring a reboot. Using FF 21.0. I found a conflict with one extension causing google maps not to work but have not found the cause of this issue.
Apparently it is system related as u r using a different browser.
 
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Last couple of days my otherwise reliable machine (windows 7) has started freezing, requiring reboot. Just now the mouse cursor changed to a Word-like cursor when you're adding text, but only partially visible, then a couple of minutes later went back to normal. This was with Firefox only running. When I just clicked on a link, again the cursor got all corrupted.

I wonder if its related to what you've had?

EDIT: fixed my problem - it was the graphics card. Too much dust in it, just needed a clean. Weirdly it was playing games fine, was only have the problem when on the desktop!
 
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I had this problem, and the cursor would also freeze randomly for a few seconds, and then work OK. Oddly, selecting the "pointer shadow" function in Windows mouse control cured everything..
 
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Hi all,

I had exactly the same problem(s) on my rig at home and also my colleague and I had this problem on our PC's at the office.

Few weeks ago I found out that the problem was caused by a faulty nVidia graphics driver.
After re-installing it back to nVidia driver version 306.97 the problem was completely gone! :bounce:
Yesterday evening I found out that the cursor problem was back again.
WTF??? Turns out that a Windows 8.1 update was the Trojan horse for the latest nVidia driver update (v.331.82) . :no:
Tonight I will go back to v.314.22. That seems to be the last problem free driver nVidia produced. We'll see...
This is what I found this morning:
http://surveys.nvidia.com/index.jsp?pi=241032f7eb7c9be2b568cb64e9dc9851
So, the problem seems to be well known...

btw. Also watch your HDD led when the screen freezes and/or your cursor changes shape! My guess is that there are very large dump files being written at that moment.

Hope this helps? Let me know...

Cheers! 😉
Sxinner
 
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Wish I would've seen this post the other day, been having this problem for months now. Did a clean install and today the problem was still happening. I was thinking, no way I still have a virus after wiping everything out. So dumb question I guess, how do I go back to an older driver?




 
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The Problem Is (in my case): hardware acceleration - I have an i7 with a GPU bd. It runs Lucid to use both integrate and PCI GPU. It is on an ASUS mb. I went round & round with ASUS. I would chg things and it would run until I decided what I did fixed it, then it would crash again. I RMAed everything. Then I found a tread RE FIREFOX and hardware acceleration.
I chkd Mozzila bugs and find that no one is working on fixing this issue even thought there r a number of different bug reports each with many "me to" posts for symptoms that mirror the symptoms I had. -- Cursor changes, random lockup, most of the time permanent requiring a reboot. The key was it only happened when I was using Firefox. Since, I usually have a number of programs open it was a while till I nailed it down to Firefox.
I turned off HA in Firefox and it now crashes about 2x/mo as opposed to constantly when Firefox is open.
I am trying to figure out if other programs use HA. So the issue is not totally solved...........





 
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My cursor continually changes to a weird shape and have determined it is only using Chrome. In other words once I move off Chrome and onto desktop or another application it reverts back to the normal pointer. It will eventually revert back to the normal cursor after a while but it has been doing this on two computers for a while now.
 
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i had that going on with other bigger issues -- but my analysis would be memory corruption. My problem was hardware acceleration in Firefox. I have an i7-3770K with an ext GPU running both. When i turned HA off in FF it is mostly fine - though i think there is another program with the same issue - it just isn't running most of the time like FF and doesn't cause an issue very frequently so i haven't found it.
 
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I discovered that a Windows Update changed the 'Cursor Schemes' in my mouse properties in Dec. 2013 update to 'None'. Changed that
and now cursor works find!!!

 
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Here is an answer I have not seen anywhere. Firstly my issues are the same as those mentioned in this string (cursor changes arbitrarily to double horizontal with dot), this happens not only in browsing (I use only Firefox) but also in Outlook when typing an email and in Word, etc. I have a Dell laptop which is almost always on a docking station at work. My problems began months ago and I had my company IT guy look at it. I removed the wireless mouse and keyboard that were part of my docking setup and attached a wired mouse and keyboard directly into the docking station (NOT into the USB of the laptop itself). Problem solved. However I liked the features of a wireless mouse and keyboard and thought new devices would be alright to test, wrong, . . . after a week the problem came back. Just tried the following fix. Went into the "scroll pad" settings of my mouse and disabled the scroll pad-turned it off. Seems to work for the time being, will report back if this is not a long term solution. Yes, . . . when I undock and attempt to use the scroll pad I will no doubt dislike the fact that I will have to reset the scroll pad to be operational but at least it fixes this very annoying issue for the time being. Of note, never noticed this cursor problem while surfing, etc. on the laptop while it was undocked. I think my situation may be a little different than others and I suspect that my scroll pad and peripherals were simply at odds. Again, will report if things change and/or I will edit this post if I find out more, cheers.
 
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