Mouse pointer disappears

Asus Laptop, model G50V; Vista Home Premium X64: the mouse pointer works fine with Windows, and when surfing, and when doing general PC stuff, but if a game is launched like Crysis or Half-Life, the pointer disappears. It's active though; you can see it as you move through the game menus (like the options menus, the controls menus, etc), when you move over an item, the item is highlighted, and as you move off the item, it becomes un-highlighted, so I know the mouse is working, it's just invisible. The weird thing is, when the games are run in 'windowed' mode (vs 'full screen' mode), the mouse pointer is totally visible and functional; as soon as the game is switched to full screen, the mouse pointer disappears. WTF?
:confused
The owner of the PC reports there was an error message that said something like "graphic overlay error". I have uninstalled and reinstalled the video drivers, no difference.

 

Try changing pointers, themes, etc., see if that changes symptoms...or another mouse, for that matter...

I hate mouse problems...

 

Ah, sorry - it's a laptop...so, plug in a mouse, see if anything changes...

I hate touchpad problems...

 

I was just going to say this. Those games probably just don't have full touchpad support.

If you have the same problem with a wireless mouse, try a different wireless, or a wired one. When I started playing Dragon Age on my ASUS laptop I had to put my Microsoft wireless mouse aside and use a Logitech one instead, the Microsoft mouse scroll wheel stopped working in-game. Very annoying.

 

Well, the thing is, according to the owner of the PC, the mouse/touchpad worked fine in the games about a week ago. From what I can tell (and from what I've been told), nothing major occurred a week ago. Just one day, the pointer disappeared from all games. The PCs owner also said he has tried a USB mouse and got the same results, but I haven't tried it yet myself.... I'm gonna try it in a minute or two....

 

One week ago is several OS updates and potential game patches ago. If the PC owner is like most others I help with computers, when they say "nothing" they actually mean "nothing except all the regular updates that I always do"

 

:celebrate PROBLEM SOLVED!! :dood

On a whim, I went to the Mouse settings in the Control Panel, and turned off pointer shadows, turned off pointer trailing, and unchecked the box for "hide cursor when typing". These 3 simple changes fixed the problem!!!

:dancer :hyper

Thanks for the input everyone!!! It's always nice to see you guys are helping out!!!
:major

 

Good job - glad you got it...:drink