Bug: disabling cursor shadow on virtual Win2K corrupts cursor

WinXP host PC, Win2K client PC.
On the client PC, open the control panel, Mouse, select the standard system
cursors if they're not already selected (the 'none' scheme)

Disable (un-check) pointer shadow, click 'ok'.

Now the standard pointer appears as just a single-pixel black horizontal
line, with the hotspot somewhere non-obvious relative to the line.

The same applies to any monochrome cursor; testing with other schemes,
colour cursors are okay.

I haven't installed a virtual XP box to try this on yet but I'd suspect
the same thing will happen.

-- dan

 

Sounds like a problem with your installation. I've never seen this
before and I just checked and it works on my Win2K, and I know it
doesn't happen on XP.

Try re-copying your mouse pointers, sounds like they got corrupted.

Steve Jain, Microsoft MVP for Virtual PC for Windows
Website: http://www.essjae.com
*** All posts are provided AS-IS, no warranty, no QoS ***

 

I would suggest making sure you have updated your Host
video drivers as a first step. Then, if you still have
the problem, go into the advanced settings for the Host
display and change the Hardware acceleration down one
notch on the "troubleshoot" tab. This disables cursor and
bitmap accelerations.

And, just out of curiosity, what video card do you have
on the host?

Scott

 

I wouldn't be surprised if the host had a Matrox video card.

Steve Jain, Microsoft MVP for Virtual PC for Windows
Website: http://www.essjae.com
*** All posts are provided AS-IS, no warranty, no QoS ***

 

That's my guess too. Guess what I'm working with right
now...

Scott

 

Scott, is Matrox a bad card or just troublesome with VPC?

 

In the past its been troublesome with VPC, but it wasn't all cards,
but there were definitely certain cards that had issues. Can't recall
any specific cards off the top of my head, but we purchased a bunch
via eBay for testing back at Connectix to verify compatibility issues.

Steve Jain, Microsoft MVP for Virtual PC for Windows
Website: http://www.essjae.com
*** All posts are provided AS-IS, no warranty, no QoS ***

 

My _personal_ experience has shown that they tend to have poor drivers,
or at least their drivers don't work well on Windows. For VPC purposes,
I base this on the fact that, using the same Matrox card, new drivers
made VPC completely unusable; versus older drivers VPC was only
partially unusable. I've never had a problem with ATI or nVIDIA and VPC.

Scott

 

Does the G400 series ring a bell?

Scott

 

Graphics card is a GeForce FX 5200.

Upgrading drivers from 52.16 to 61.77, no improvement.
Winding hardware accel down a notch on the host: no improvement.
Winding hardware accel all the way down on the host: no improvement.

What I did forget to mention is that this only happens if I have pointer
integration disabled, which may well be fairly significant..

-- dan

 

I haven't had any issues with ATI or nVIDIA chipsets.
Maybe someone else will be able to offer a suggestion.

Scott

 

Ok, when I disabled pointer integration, then it happened. It might
be possible to recopy the mouse pointer files and repair this. This
was what you needed to do with Windows NT Terminal Server. If I get a
chance, I'll give it a try.

Steve Jain, Microsoft MVP for Virtual PC for Windows
Website: http://www.essjae.com
*** All posts are provided AS-IS, no warranty, no QoS ***

 

The plot thickens -- a bit more testing, and it seems to be that in
general black-and-white cursors work fine, it's just the default ones that
have problems. If I change to the magnified scheme, no problems, if I use
something in colour like the hands scheme, no problems either.

If I use the default scheme but change just the pointer to (say) the large
arrow, then the normal pointer is fine but everything else shows up as the
horizontal bar. Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't actually find the
cursor files for the default cursor set in \winnt\cursors, just all the
non-standard ones.

Thanks for confirming it's not just me, anyway -- things this obviously
broken do make me wonder at times.

-- dan

 

Here's another bug -- Win2K, cursor shadow _enabled_, mouse integration
still disabled (ie it's VPC that's rendering the cursors):

If I select the 'hands' scheme, the 'unavailable' cursor shows up as the
broken horizontal line. (eg, open IE and try and drag My Computer into
there -- you get a faded My Computer icon, and a thin horizontal line over
the top of it for the cursor).

This is a colour icon, and I have cursor shadowing turned on, so whatever
bug in the cursor rendering stuff is there it'll show up with or without
shadows, it just seems to be harder to get to happen without shadows.

Copying that file from a real PC doesn't fix it, for what that's worth.

-- dan

 

Another one that's broken with the 'hands' cursor scheme is the cursor for
resizing columns in listcontrols (ie windows explorer in details view)

Same workaround as before, enable pointer integration.

-- dan