Weird Mouse Icon Error

[Spacefreak]

Hey,

I've been having this problem with my mouse icon where it changes into this odd vertical icon composed of 8 or so little images of just the top of the original mouse icon. Also, around when this happens, if the mouse icon needs to change to the "I" icon used for text, it begins to flicker and has 2 bars above it.

I've searched around and I've found some people who had a problem where the mouse randomly became enlarged but that was fixed with an ATI HD4800 series hotfix for the 9.12 driver, but the driver I'm using is version 10.2 which is the most up to date. It's not a major problem, mostly aesthetic really, but I'm worried that it might be a symptom of a larger problem, i.e. my graphics card slowly dying.

I noticed that the problem occurs (at least recently) when I'm moving the mouse from one monitor to the other (I have a dual monitor setup). The monitors have different resolutions. My primary is 1280x768 and my secondary is 1440x900.

Any thoughts that anyone could provide would be really appreciated. It's not a huge concern but I figure it's better to be safe than sorry.

Thanks,
Spacefreak

 

[IanFarewell]

Welcome to the forums, us new fellows need to stick together ^.^,

Could you provide a screen shot to get a better understanding of what you are talking about?

It sounds like to me a very rare flaw in the way the graphics card is displaying the mouse, should be fixable however.

 

[Spacefreak]

Haha thanks, though to be honest I hope to not be here too often, or at least in the troubleshooting section.

Unfortunately, the problem isn't reproducible, so I can't post a screen shot right now, but when it happens again I'll be sure to post a shot.

 

[Spacefreak]

I finally got the error to come up but apparently PrintScreen doesn't take the image of the mouse, which is brilliant yet terribly inconvenient in this case. I just took some pictures with my phone, which has surprisingly high resolution. Here's the link to a few images:

ImageShack Album - 3 images

The pictures are of the error propagating in three ways: normal arrow icon, blue spinning disc icon, and the icon that should usually be the "I" mouse icon for text. Sorry if the images are a bit choppy but that was the best I could do until the error went away. Interestingly, the error went away when I moved the mouse over to my other monitor and back to my first.

 

[IanFarewell]

Are you sure there isn't another driver released, possible another hot patch, for your card? the beta drivers are more reliable than you think, possibly check that out. However, this is if you are curios enough to do it, what happens if you downgrade the driver to 9.12? if the problem goes away for a while, upgrade back up to see if it happens again.

In my years working with drivers I have never came to an occurrence where a patch became needed for a reason, twice. It would be interesting to find if this is the case.

 

[Spacefreak]

Haha I liked your idea and went to download the 9.12 driver and the hotfix, but I happened upon another hotfix for my current driver. Surprisingly, it corrects some error with alien vs. predator game as well as the same problem people were having before which is the enlarging of the mouse...

So apparently they didn't fix the problem in the updated drivers, which I don't quite understand and like you said is rather interesting. But hey, I'm not a computer programmer so I suppose I can't say anything.

I'll try installing the hotfix and seeing if the problem goes away and report back. Thanks for the tip!

 

[IanFarewell]

I'll try installing the hotfix and seeing if the problem goes away and report back. Thanks for the tip!

No problem ^.^, I hope it fixes it!

(I also find it really interesting how it is put in a hot fix with a random thing like an "alien vs predator glitch", kind of amusing, but two birds one stone i suppose)

 

[Spacefreak]

Bahhh, it didn't work. I still had the same mouse icon error and it happened while I was playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Though it definitely went away when I moved the mouse from one monitor to the other.

I looked some more online and I haven't found anyone else with the same problem on other forums. It's been happening much more recently as in within the past week or so. The only major change that I've made is updating my graphics driver to 10.2. I'll try and go back to 9.12 and see how that goes.

I remember having the problem before and I think the first time I noticed it was when I was playing Rise of Nations. I'm really at a loss as to what the problem could be if it's not the graphics driver. My mouse isn't anything particularly fancy and my cursor is just the standard Windows 7 cursor.

 

[Spacefreak]

So I rolled back my graphics drivers from 10.2 to 10.1 two days ago, and I haven't experienced the problem since. So it seems like it's just a problem with the new 10.2 drivers. I'll just use 10.1 until 10.3 comes out and see if it's been resolved in that one. Thanks for the help!

 

[Spacefreak]

Sigh... I spoke too soon. I had the problem again. I looked on the ATI forums and found a bunch of people there who are having the same problem and that hasn't been fixed since November, so... I'm not too optimistic.

Haha, I'll just have to hope that ATI gets it fixed soon. Thanks again

 

[johnhoh]

Sigh... I spoke too soon. I had the problem again. I looked on the ATI forums and found a bunch of people there who are having the same problem and that hasn't been fixed since November, so... I'm not too optimistic.

Haha, I'll just have to hope that ATI gets it fixed soon. Thanks again

just found this post. I use two ati hd4670 video cards with 4 monitors and have the same mouse problem as posted above. But it only happens with two of the monitors, the other two are always fine. Playing with drivers seems to help, and the vista ati catalyst 8.523 driver works the best, but the mouse pointer still becomes a vertical line from time to time

 

[Spacefreak]

Yeah, I've just sort of been dealing with it whilst following this forum:

AMD Game Forums - Windows 7 + Dual Screen Cursor Bug

Other people have been posting to this forum and I've been hoping for someone to come up with something. Usually when I have the problem I just move the cursor across the division between the monitors

 

[dajgtre]

I'd just like to say that you are not alone with this problem.

I have the exact same thing, only different images of the mouse. They are similiar though.

I have dual monitors, ati graphic card dunno which driver version (where do I check this?)

I noticed that I only get this mouse pointer error in my main monitor.

/dajgtre (also new here, because of this problem)

 

[Spacefreak]

I'm still having the problem and have just been sort of dealing with it. The newest driver update for the HD4870 was supposed to solve this, but I have yet to install it. If you want to check your driver version, go to your device manager, display adapters, right-click on "ATI HDXXXX Series" and then go to details and it should have your driver version on there. In the release notes, the newest drivers specifically mention that they fix the mouse problem, so that's a good sign. Let me know what you find out.

 

[dajgtre]

Okay my driver version is

8.741.0.0 from 2010-05-27

I should probably try to update this

 

[dajgtre]

I have now updated the driver (currently version 8.771.0.0 from 2010-08-25). It seemed that the update had solved the issue but just now the error is back which is disappointing...

 

[Spacefreak]

Yeah I tried to update and I thought it finished but when I rechecked after the restart, it was the same driver version as before. I'm going to try again at some point.

 

[johnhoh]

I've had this problem for a year now (4 monitors on two hd 4670 pci-e cards). Nothing has fixed it yet. The problem only occurs on two of the monitors

 

[Spacefreak]

Out of curiosity are the two monitors connected to the same card? Also how are they arranged relative to each other? Have you updated your drivers recently?

 

[johnhoh]

Out of curiosity are the two monitors connected to the same card? Also how are they arranged relative to each other? Have you updated your drivers recently?

Yes the two monitors are attached to one card which is in pci-e slot #1 on my msi p55-gd80 motherboard. I have current drivers and have tried older ones too - both for the video card and the motherboard.