I want to strangle my mouse pointer

[Blackbeard]

It loves to flicker between the arrow and the working symbol. Granted not all the time but enough to be annoying and start a thread. I've googled and found nothing that fixes it and have tried many things.

I have a Dell running vista and for the life of me can't figure it out, any help would be appreciated.

[rp252]

The techo-sorcerers should be along to help you soon mate.  I'd try and help but you'd be better off waiting for their advice than my guesswork

[donvito]

We have more qualified members but I'll try.
Do you have anything big and resource intensive application running in the background? Antivirus scan, movie download, another application? Have you tried restarting you pc, or turning it off for a minute or two and turning it back on? I'm using Chrome and nothing else atm, never had this problem with apps working in the background, running on Vista as well.

Edit: do you have any pending updates? if you do install them

[Blackbeard]

no, nothing is ever running when it happens(at least nothing that I'm aware of, but you know PC's like to go about their robotic business) happens quite alot, for at least the last six months. using IE 

[Blackbeard]

One other thing; It does it when sitting inside an explorer window, but not when just hovering over desktop.

[andre0407]

Not an expert here, but I'll try.

Did you try rolling back/ reinstalling your mouse driver, Blackbeard?

[Blackbeard]

Not an expert here, but I'll try.

Did you try rolling back/ reinstalling your mouse driver, Blackbeard?

I've never updated the driver, so I don't know if that would apply.

[Medic82]

Try another browser like Opera or Fire Fox

[andre0407]

Not an expert here, but I'll try.

Did you try rolling back/ reinstalling your mouse driver, Blackbeard?

I've never updated the driver, so I don't know if that would apply.

  how about updating the driver then? If you know your vendor, you should be able to google for any new updates for said driver....?

[Sea Monster]

I've had this problem before, it's a minor tweak to fix it.


all you need is a couple of minutes spare time


& a 100 tonne press.

[Blackbeard]

I've had this problem before, it's a minor tweak to fix it.


all you need is a couple of minutes spare time


& a 100 tonne press.

That seems about right 

[thebullfrog]

Vista did that to me at one point too. Drove me effing insane. After I reformatted it went away lol. Don't remember why I reformatted it now (think I was just bored....). I do know before the format I was able to make it stop by disabling "plug and play" in services.msc. I think Vista kept trying to look for connected devices that weren't there. I just had to remember to re-enable it if I ever plugged a new peripheral in.

You can try going into services.msc (type "services.msc" into the run box in the start menu) find "plug and play", right click, go to "properties" and stop the service. then change it to "disabled" and reboot. See if that gets it to stop.

[Blackbeard]

Vista did that to me at one point too. Drove me effing insane. After I reformatted it went away lol. Don't remember why I reformatted it now (think I was just bored....). I do know before the format I was able to make it stop by disabling "plug and play" in services.msc. I think Vista kept trying to look for connected devices that weren't there. I just had to remember to re-enable it if I ever plugged a new peripheral in.

You can try going into services.msc (type "services.msc" into the run box in the start menu) find "plug and play", right click, go to "properties" and stop the service. then change it to "disabled" and reboot. See if that gets it to stop.

Thanks BF, I'll give it a go tomorrow.

[Whoey]

It's the built in annoy the customer until they upgrade to win7 feature

No idea, I avoided Vista like a plague, and have not seen such an issue before. What thebullfrog said makes sense, I'd google it first.