Windows 10: mouse pointer gets lost on inactive (powered down) display

I have a 4K monitor and an HDTV set up as an extended display in Windows 10. Why does Windows allow my mouse pointer to travel to the HDTV when it is off? I continually lose my mouse pointer in this way. My HDTV is to the left of my main display and the cursor can travel off the left edge of my 4K monitor into nowhere land. (The cursor is barred from crossing the top, bottom and right edges, as expected.) Is this actually some brilliant feature that simple people like me just can't understand? Certainly Windows can detect the number and state of the displays (?). Explain it to me.

GigaByte GA-X99-UD3-WiFi, NVidia GTX 1060, Adesso Nuform keyboard/trackpad

:)

 

Mouse Settings Reset Button

Hi Rykel, It seems Microsoft does not provide a button for resetting all your mouse Settings

The best I can provide is a list of the Default mouse settings in Windows 10:

Primary Button: Left

Mouse Wheel Scrolls: Multiple lines at a time (as opposed to a screen at a time)

How many lines to scroll: 3

Inactive window scroll: On

Buttons

Configuration: Right-handed

Double Click Speed: 5th notch from the right

Click Lock: Off

Pointers

Scheme: None

Enable pointer shadow: Off

Pointer Options

Pointer Speed: Center of Slider

Enhance pointer precision: On

Snap To: Off

Display pointer trails: Off

Hide pointer while typing: On

Show pointer location on CTRL: Off

 

Win 10 boot manager GUI menu, no mouse pointer

I have a machine with three Windows 10 partitions. When I boot I get the boot manager menu but there is no mouse pointer displayed. If I wobble the mouse around it will eventually intersect a menu entry and highlight it. I can then click and boot that menu
item. So I have a mouse pointer but it isn't displayed. I can also do a work around using the Tab and Arrow keys. No big problem just an inconvenience.

Tonight I clean installed (booted from a USB) one of the partitions and I got my mouse pointer back. However, it only showed the pointer when the new system was the default boot. When I changed the default boot to either one of the other systems then I lost
the mouse pointer. The other two systems were upgrade installs from Win 8.1.

I have a laptop which was also upgraded from Win 8.1. I forced it to show a boot menu and it had no mouse pointer either.

I'm not about to go and clean install the three systems that were upgraded. That would be an unnecessary pain. However, it would be nice to easily use the mouse again in the boot menu.

Anyone have any ideas?

thanks

Bob

 

If you just turn secondary display off but you still have Settings > Display > Multiple displays set to Extend, Windows thinks the display is there even it has been turned off. It's not enough to turn it off, you must also set Multiple Displays to Show only on 1.

 

Yes, Kari, that's the way it works, but it's a PITA. It's a little like having to issue commands to tell the Windows that a USB drive is present after you've inserted it. If Windows can detect a monitor, what's the sense of Windows allowing me to move a pointer to a monitor that isn't on? It's a bug.

 

It knows its there, it just doesn't know its off. Press the Windows Logo Key *Start + P and select "PC only" and it won't happen. I have short cuts on my taskbar to switch from PC only to Extend.
C:\Windows\System32\DisplaySwitch.exe /internal
C:\Windows\System32\DisplaySwitch.exe /extend

 

Thanks alphanu. I think I'll put it on my list to write a C# tray program that registers to receive that event then does the equivalent of your commands automatically in a callback. You got my mind a workin'.