WinXP: Howto hide mouse pointer when no mouse connected?

[Per Hansson]

Hi, I upgraded 2x Fanuc CNC's from NT4 & Win2K to Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 (Basically WinXP SP3, same build number and all)

They work great and performance is super.
I just have one question; on the previous NT4 & Win2K installs,
when I removed the PS/2 mouse & keyboard from the system they would then not show a mouse pointer on system startup anymore.
But XP does, so there is a mouse pointer in the middle of the screen I can't move now...

I've done allot of Googling and can't find a solution I really like.
Examples I have seen: Use a mouse cursor icon with only one pixel or completely invisible.
Remove the mouse drivers from the system.

Solutions that are close to what I want:
nomousy.exe - A small utility designed to hide and/or restrict mouse cursor movement.
AutoHideMouseCursor 1.42 Automatically hide the mouse cursor

The first two I dislike because if you add a mouse to the system for maintenance it gets very difficult to use.
The second two are good, however I'd prefer a solution which does not require a third party program taking up memory
(these systems only have 128MB RAM) to solve an issue which was not there in Win2K & NT4!
Do any of our Arcade gurus have some experience with this?

[Pentium4]

Re: WinXP: Howto hide mouse pointer when no mouse connected?

Maybe give this one a try? http://cursor-hider.soft32.com/

[Per Hansson]

Re: WinXP: Howto hide mouse pointer when no mouse connected?

Thanks for the recommendation but it seems to cost money, so then the other two programs are probably better...
http://www.cursorhider.com/

I just double checked yesterday and a vanilla Windows XP SP3 has the same behavior, as does Windows 7 SP1
It is "fixed" in Windows 8 tho
(I.e. no mouse cursor shown with no mouse connected)

[mariushm]

Re: WinXP: Howto hide mouse pointer when no mouse connected?

Disable the mouse in Device Manager ?

[Per Hansson]

Re: WinXP: Howto hide mouse pointer when no mouse connected?

mariushm: There is no mouse to disable since I removed it from the system.
And if I disabled the hidden mouse device it would be a pain to re-enable if I want to connect a mouse for service...

[Per Hansson]

Re: WinXP: Howto hide mouse pointer when no mouse connected?

I'm using AutoHideMouseCursor v1.51 now.
This version works well, I reported an issue the program had when explorer.exe was not running as shell.
The author fixed it surprisingly fast with that version update

[ben7]

Re: WinXP: Howto hide mouse pointer when no mouse connected?

Or, you could hack up a program that would do that automatically, like you want

[stretch0069]

Re: WinXP: Howto hide mouse pointer when no mouse connected?

not to get off topic, but i thought is was bad to connect/disconnect ps/2 while the pc was powered. mikee confused.....

[ratdude747]

Re: WinXP: Howto hide mouse pointer when no mouse connected?

not to get off topic, but i thought is was bad to connect/disconnect ps/2 while the pc was powered. mikee confused.....

Connect: usually bad.Some motherboards really don't like hot-unplugging the keyboard ( ?). On the other hand, some laptops will auto-detect and enable anything hot-plugged on PS/2.

Disconnect: Try not to do it, but if it happens, no harm, no foul. On systems that won't , a reconnect will usually re-enable the device.

[Per Hansson]

Re: WinXP: Howto hide mouse pointer when no mouse connected?

not to get off topic, but i thought is was bad to connect/disconnect ps/2 while the pc was powered. mikee confused.....

I'm not hotplugging the PS/2 devices.
The system shows the mouse pointer when I coldboot it again with no mouse connected.
And yes, it is bad to hotplug PS/2 devices, I especially won't do it on CNC gear costing thousands of dollars

Or, you could hack up a program that would do that automatically, like you want

I'm not a programmer but AutoHideMouseCursor does what I want.
I only wish it was not a requirement, like in NT4, Win2K & Win8...

[stretch0069]

Re: WinXP: Howto hide mouse pointer when no mouse connected?

thanks gents.....i thought i was crazy......well......

[Blargh523]

Re: WinXP: Howto hide mouse pointer when no mouse connected?

Without using extra software, you can also replace the mouse cursor with a clear cursor file.

Control panel -> Mouse -> Pointers

Select "Normal Select" then browse to the transparent cursor.

Here's one I whipped up:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/36807119/transparent.cur

Disclaimer: This can be really annoying to undo.

{ETA: I missed the bit about "mouse for maintenance," but I don't have the option to delete this post, so I'll let it stand in hopes it does someone some good}