Problem with text select icon disappearing, and the fix...

[Gabe]

A while ago, after updating drivers in both my AMR5 and my AM06 Pro, which are both Ryzen 5 5600U based, I noticed that the pointer would often completely disappear when in a field, like the address bar in Edge or a message body, like while typing this. Because of it I had to roll back the display driver in each unit and then not install an update to them when they would inevitably show up in the Advanced part of Windows Update.

If you're having the same problem, here's the fix...

Go into the Control Panel, click on Mouse, then Pointers. On the Pointers screen, scroll to Text Select, highlight it, then click Browse. Scroll down to choose one of the options, which in my case is beam_r, click it, then click Open, then click Apply.

Now, whenever you move the pointer over a field, the text select bar, like to the right of the Text Select option in the first picture, will always show up like it's supposed to instead of completely disappearing.

Screenshot 2023-09-21 180638.png (18.78 KiB) Viewed 4189 times

Screenshot 2023-09-21 180515.png (38.02 KiB) Viewed 4189 times

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[dragonpoo]

That sounds like the Windows option to "Hide pointer while typing." It's meant to do that.

From Windows 10 - Settings app > Devices > Mouse, choose the related settings for "Additional Mouse Options"
From Windows 11 - Settings app > Bluetooth & Devices > Mouse, Related settings for "Additional mouse settings"
From any version of Windows - Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Devices and Printers > Mouse

Once you get that Mouse Properties menu, go to Pointer Options and uncheck "Hide pointer while typing" and save.

[Gabe]

That sounds like the Windows option to "Hide pointer while typing." It's meant to do that.

That's not the issue. The issue is, after updating the display driver to current in both units, the pointer completely disappears when it's moved over a field, whether it's the address bar or a message body. It's definitely NOT supposed to do that. When it happens, you can't see where the pointer is.

It made trying to type anything quite frustrating, as you couldn't see where the pointer currently was, meaning you couldn't see it in the field to click on it to select that field to type in.

It did this on the two mini PCs mentioned. Both have the same CPU. It also did it on my new Dell laptop with a Ryzen 5 5625U. I searched for almost two hours the day I got my laptop for a solution. If I hadn't found it I likely would have sent the laptop back to Amazon, as the problem is simply too frustrating to deal with. This is what I finally found.

[dragonpoo]

That's so bizarre, and apologies for not catching the difference. I've seen things like that before, over the years, but not specifically on my mini PCs, so I wonder what the big difference is. I'm glad you found a solution for it.