Games disabling mouse shadow!

Discussion in 'Games, Gaming & Game-demos' started by Cody-7, Oct 27, 2010.

  1. Cody-7

    Cody-7 Active Member

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    Hi all,

    For years I have been annoyed by the fact that many games disable the mouse shadow in xp / vista / 7 when the game starts up. And then i have to manually re-enable it in the control panel.

    Is there a way to automtically re-enable the shadow or "lock" the setting so games can't disable it? I did some registry searching but didnt really turn anything up.

    P.S. This is really an issue of aesthetics i think, becasue games like CS:S disable the shadow, but you can minimize it and enable the mouse shadow and maximize the game, and it causes no problem

    - Thanks
     
  2. Indeo

    Indeo Ancient Guru

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    Have it all the time, mostly with poorly coded ports. This issue involves both the game and Windows, nothing you can do about it.
     
  3. Cody-7

    Cody-7 Active Member

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    Well, I was thinking. If there is a registry key that controls it, possibly there would be a way to make a .bat file (basically just a speedy way) to re-enable it without opening mouse properties?
     
  4. viren

    viren Ancient Guru

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    Enable the mouse shadow and save the theme, that may help.
     

  5. Darren Hodgson

    Darren Hodgson Ancient Guru

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    Ah so this is why my mouse shadow keeps turning off then... always wondered what was causing it...
     
  6. Cody-7

    Cody-7 Active Member

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    Hey guys, i was working on this problem a little more and wanted to give an update. After a lot of searching through the registry, i found two entries that are clearly related to the mouse shadowing. First one:
    Code:
    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VisualEffects\CursorShadow]
    "Type"="checkbox"
    "Text"="@shell32.dll,-30531"
    "SPIActionGet"=dword:0000101a
    "SPIActionSet"=dword:0000101b
    "CheckedValue"=dword:00000001
    "UncheckedValue"=dword:00000000
    "DefaultValue"=dword:00000001
    "HelpID"="windows.hlp#51140"
    
    This has values in it that look to be related to the check box itself, and wasn't much help. But then i found this second one:

    Code:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\UserPreferencesMask
    This has a lot of keys in it, related to other visual appearence settings... like the path and file name of the wallpaper, cursor blink rate, desktop tile setting, etc. But one is interesting: the UserPreferencesMask value. After doing some research from microsoft, it is a bit mask of of many visual settings. According to theMicrosoft documentation bit number 13 of the sequence controls whether the mouse shadow is turned on.
    Since i really don't know very much on converting numbers to hex, I did a simple test. Turned my mouse shadow off, and copied the resulting bit mask of all the combined settings. Next turned it back on and copied the value. Then, after exiting a game that disabled my shadow and thus changed the bit mask, i imported the reg entry containing the bit-mask with my mouse shadow enabled.

    Nothing happened :( Any idea why?
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2011
  7. ])rStrangelove

    ])rStrangelove Ancient Guru

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    Wow, mouse shadow is gone, call 911 8|
     
  8. vebero

    vebero Member Guru

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    Another way would be to change registry key permissions, but it can lead to more trouble though. :p
     
  9. TheHunter

    TheHunter Banned

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    I use to have that, but not anymore.. Ever since win7 SP1 or since i got this 570gtx, i think idk.

    It use to happen with older games (i still have some older installed), but its all good atm so i dont really know what's the deal:infinity:
     
  10. Darren Hodgson

    Darren Hodgson Ancient Guru

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    I noticed the mouse shadow turning off glitch before but I haven't seen it in months. I don't know whether it's a bug that was fixed via my SideWinder X8's v8.2 or v8.1 IntelliMouse drivers or simply just because I switched from Customised to "Prefer Quality" (or whatever it's called) settings. Whatever, it doesn't happen any more.
     

  11. dcx_badass

    dcx_badass Guest

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    No problems with mine.
     
  12. vebero

    vebero Member Guru

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  13. Cody-7

    Cody-7 Active Member

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    Thanks for your help vebero, but this is still a problem as of 2016 with Win7 x64. I have different parts as you can imagine in the time that has passed since I opened this thread. In a twist of irony, I returned to this thread in another endless google search - "games disabling mouse shadow" and I find my own thread ranking at the top!

    I decided to see if your links were still working - could you please re upload to another file hosting service? Or could someone help me with this long running ignored frakin nuisance?

    Please refrain from posting disruptive comments in my threads thank you.
     

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