Cursor disappears from the desktop?

Can you see the mouse pointer, or does that also disappear?

Welcome to Fluther.

Some applications seem to “hijack” and hide or bury the mouse cursor from time to time in a hidden window. You might try googling the term “mouse cursor utilities” to check out some of the (sometimes amazing) free utilities that have been developed for imaginative ways to control the view of the cursor, locating it in busy screen real estate, controlling data input and screen viewing (including freehand drawing, adding text, zooming, etc.) and all sorts of things you may never have even thought of … but someone has.

For example, on my computer at work, where what you describe sometimes happens to me, I have found and loaded a low-overhead utility program that will make concentric rings (like the appearance of a pebble thrown into a pond) when I just hit the Ctrl key and nothing else. (I don’t use it so much on my new Win7 computer there, and I don’t recall the name of the utility or I’d just tell you that.)

You may not get the exact answer you’re looking for in a response here, but the answer is out there; you just need to be pointed in the right direction to look for it.

Thanks Brian1946 & CWOTUS. I can find no reply button to submit a reply, sorry for that. Since I got no response to this question in some sort of help forum, I turned to Fluther because I received so much help last time and thought someone might have been there before. And, no, I cannot see the mouse pointer and I work on my sister’s computer now, trying to figure out what’s happening to my PC.

I will keep searching for solutions. Thanks again.

Does it happen to be a laptop? Some on some laptops you can toggle the cursor off by pressing the FN key with one of the F keys. I know you said you plugged in a different mouse and I would imagine the keys are there to disable the trackpad. But maybe for some reason it would also disable a external mouse.

Try going to your control panel / appearance & personalization and see if the mouse was somehow hidden.

In the mouse settings you should be able to enable a thing where you hit control and it sends a little ring out from wherever the mouse is to help you find it.

edit: bah already mentioned