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I feel like I've seen this problem with multiple virtual machines with Win8 and Win7 on multiple physical machines using VMWare and Visual Studio Tablet Simulator. Once you start using a virtual machine of anything, and then go back to Windows, there'll be random artifacts on your mouse pointer, little black dots that follow your pointer around. Does anyone know of a solution outside of rebooting?

(Has anyone else even seen this problem? I'm awfully sure I've seen it in many different scenarios though I haven't been keeping track, but I don't see any other complaints about it elsewhere, so who knows maybe it's my mouse or something ridiculous like that; such things happen).

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  • Change screen resolution or color depth, then change back?
    – techturtle
    Commented Apr 22, 2014 at 19:05
  • @techturtle If you make that an answer, I'll at least +1 it because it worked and was much faster than rebooting, and I feel dumb for not having thought of that. (And just for the record--you've seen the problem too?)
    – Dax Fohl
    Commented Apr 22, 2014 at 19:08
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    Can't say that I've seen it on VMs, but I've had other programs do similar stuff (colored bars or boxes, stuck cursors or icons, etc). It seems especially susceptible when a program changes the color depth on you (which a VM is likely to do).
    – techturtle
    Commented Apr 22, 2014 at 19:26
  • Good enough, +25 @techturtle unless someone comes by with something more specific.
    – Dax Fohl
    Commented Apr 22, 2014 at 19:39
  • Have you ensured your video drivers (on the host) are up-to-date?
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Commented Apr 22, 2014 at 20:10

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Changing the screen resolution or color depth of the host operating system then changing it back has worked for me when I've had similar weirdness with my video drivers. It usually resets it without the hassle of rebooting.

If this works and if it is a commonly occurring problem, you may want to see if your video driver has configurable hotkeys for switching quickly. Alternately, you could try creating an AutoHotKey script for changing the resolution/color (this way it could change and put it back in one key combo).

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