FIX: Cursor disappears on ASUS Win 8.1laptop/tablet after using touchscreen

So, going away soon and wanted to buy a laptop/tablet that I could use for travel that wouldn’t weigh 2.7kg like my Alienware would. Had a bit of a hunt around and, considering how much I loved my original ASUS Transformer, I decided to go with the ASUS Transformer T100.

Beautiful little machine – I really do love it. Full Windows 8.1, nice size, comfortable to use.

I like personalising my machine, so there are a few things that get thrown onto a PC straight away – I auto customise my background, icon picture, desktop icons and mouse cursors. Don’t question it, it’s just the way I roll.

So did all of that, got everything installed, and away we went – installed a few apps (you know, the major ones: Facebook, Twitter, a calendar app that lets me use my Google calendar) and then setup all my accounts so it’d be mine-all-mine. Then the big one – Steam, so I could play *actual* games on this thing!

I then started playing with the touch setup, because (up until this point) I’d been using the touchpad. Touch was fabulous – Windows 8.1 really is designed for touch, not for mouse. I then needed to go back and do some fine tuning in Steam (downloading some games).

Cursor gone. No idea where it went. Reboot of the machine bought it back, but the minute I switched from using the touchpad to using the touchscreen, it vanished.

Not. Cool.

Went hunting online to try and find the cause. Found plenty of people with similar issues, but no fixes – or the fixes that people claimed worked (such as the FN+F9 key combination) weren’t for the problem I was having.

5 pages of Google results and two weeks of poking later and I finally worked out how to fix this problem.

The issue, to start with, was me. My customisation of my machine was the primary cause of this failure. Use of custom cursors (yes, I’m living in the 90’s, stop judging!) was the issue…sort of.

Moving those custom cursors into the C:\Windows\Cursors directory fixed the problem.

Tada! Problem solved. I wish I could find the post that pointed this out, but I’ve been searching again, and I can’t…but if you read this, a massive thank you to the lovely gentleman who finally worked this out and stopped me pulling my hair out in frustration!

12 thoughts on “FIX: Cursor disappears on ASUS Win 8.1laptop/tablet after using touchscreen

  1. Craig Askings

    And with any luck this post will be indexed by google and will save the next customiser some grief 🙂

    Reply
  2. HAPTK

    THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NO ONE UNDERSTANDS THE NEED FOR SUTOM CURSORS!!!!!!!!!! <3 <3 <3 Yes this was indexed by google but thanks to you!!!

    Reply
    1. girlgerms Post author

      I am not your tech support. Seriously, if you can’t work this out from the information I’ve given, you may want to take your tablet to someone else to fix.

      Reply
    2. manda

      right there with you, I mean. I have no clue how to customize my cursers, but when I find out, I’ll let you know.

      Reply
  3. Joe

    I never customized my cursors and have the exact same problem on the same win 8 touchpad/laptop. I’m going to try putting the normal cursor in C:\Windows\Cursors and see if that works – thanks for your post.

    Reply
  4. Gileriodekel

    OMG!!! I’ve had my computer for over a year, and had just resigned to the fact that the touchscreen would never be practical for me to use because I have to restart the computer EVERYTIME!! This is EXACTLY what I needed to fix that! thank you SOOOO much!!

    Reply

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