Moving palettes causes mouse to disappear totally

[ladlon]

Hi.  I'm running the latest version of APhoto (and ADesigner) on Win7Pro (NVidia card, and 32gigs RAM), and find  that moving any palette (ex. brushes) causes the mouse pointer to permanently become invisible not only in APhoto, but Windows overall.  The mouse still functions, but is invisible.

The only thing that fixes it, is a reboot of Windows.

This issue happens consistantly, any time I either break off a palette from its docked position and move it somewhere... or even (as I found out today) if I bring up a new palette (via the View > Studio pulldown menu) and move that.

I'd imagine many others would be mentioning this if it were solely an APhoto thing, so I suspect there MAY be some specific additional factor on my system.  One thing I would put as a possible culprit would be my Multiplicity LAN-based KVM software (from Stardock)... although it doesn't seem an obvious cause.  This ONLY  happens (so far) when dragging palettes, so it's also specific to that, as other dragging (ex. paint brush, sliders) causes no issue.

APhoto (and ADesigner) are otherwise working great (....aside from selecting brushes from the brush palette being fairly finicky, sometimes taking a few clicks to register... and sometimes, even when the new brush's thumbnail becomes highlighted, the paint stroke still uses the previous brush stroke/profile.  I made a post about this previously.)

Please let me know if there's anything you'd like me to try, or if there's some internal log or something I could send.  But, over here, it happens consistantly.  Just move a palette, and the mouse pointer vanishes until Windows is rebooted.

I'd experiement a lot to try and narrow it down, but obviously having the mouse vanish, and having to reboot each time causes the process to be quite slow (and tricky, trying to click on things to actually close down!).

 

(PS. I could have sworn I posted about this yesterday, but I couldn't find the post, so I wrote this today.  Sorry if there is, in fact, a duplicate somewhere that I missed.)

 

UPDATE: I just tried it (intentionally) again, but (currently) it isn't triggering the issue.  I tried a few combinations of things (tablet pen drag, mouse drag, mouse drag through another computer controlling the 'Affinity' one via the Multiplicity software KVM... but so far, no issue triggered (....go figure).  I'm sure it will happen again, as it has happened (previously!) consistently.  Must be some other action/status that needs to be present before the drag triggers the issue, although I haven't spotted it yet.  I'll let you know if it happens again, and I remember what action I did beforehand.  For now, I guess I'm just hoping you might have some theories on what could possibly trigger this very specific issue (...only triggered by dragging palettes in APhoto... and causes mouse/tablet pen pointer to become invisible throughout Windows).

[Chris B]

Hey ladlon,

I wonder if this is primarily caused when an additional pointing device in installed. I only really use my Wacom when I'm testing or trying to reproduce an issue and I can't say I've ever seen this and I interact with the pallets frequently.

What Windows Ink settings do you have in Preferences > Tool and in the tablet driver?

[ladlon]

Hi, Chris.  I agree, the mouse and keyboard are on a different PC, but are shared to the host PC and the 'work' PC (where I have Affinity installed) via the KVM software... so it certainly is a possibility that they could be interfering... although normally I'd think it would be more of the mouse fighting the pen, as far as pointer position/movement... which is not the case here (thankfully).  The tablet is directly connected to the work PC, though.

Looking in Affinity's Tool preferences, the Windows Ink item is unchecked (and in fact, greyed out).  That's not installed in vanilla Win7, is it?  I don't think I have that installed here.

I do have the Wacom control panel/software installed, though.

It's odd... everything works just fine (mouse, pen, Affinity in general)...  Just gets completely smacked if you move a palette... except for today, when I mention the issue(!).

Actualy, the issue was worse previously (last year), as it not only would make the mouse invisible, but Windows/Affinity would suddenly become a slideshow, as if the CPU were getting completely bashed.  Oddly enough, today's occurance just had the pointer going invisible, but no hit to the 'performance'.

When I have time, I'll try and stress test it... intentionally trying to trigger the issue, and I'll keep note of what actions I do beforehand, and see if I can isolate the pre-trigger trigger.

 

NOTE: Sorry, I just realized... You might be thinking I'm using a 'tablet' in the sense of a mobile device.  No, I'm on a desktop, using a DRAWING tablet.  I should have clarified that (.... why the heck do they have to call both items a tablet??? )

[Chris B]

I wanted to make sure the setting for Windows Ink was not enabled and nor was it in the preferences for your tablet driver.

I've only ever lost my mouse cursor when say, a game has gone into Window mode and I have to Alt+Tab or something. Does that fix it for you?

I'd really like to see it in action if we could get a video when it happens.

[ladlon]

I'll see what I can do, but it might be tricky... since once it happens, it's hard to control anything (...such as turning off the recorder and saving the file!).

I may have to just record it with a mobile device pointed at the screen.

[Chris B]

Hah, I understand! I'm sorry this is happening but I appreciate the offer of you recording it with your mobile  Though I would be interested to see if the recording software picks the mouse up! 

[ladlon]

Sorry, I forgot about this thread!

I'll have to try and get that recording for you in the next few days.  Lots happening over here...