Why doesn't my custom mouse cursor load after restart?

Question

I have created a new personal preferences profile in Windows 7 which cycles my background pictures from a custom folder location and changed my mouse cursor. When I save this profile and activate it, everything runs as it should. My problem is when I restart my computer, my mouse cursor is back to the default but my custom background setting is still active. I have to reopen my preferences and click on my profile to activate it. Why doesn't my OS load my cursor automatically ?

Things to note:

• I am using a logitech G500.
• OS: Windows 7 (happened within multiple OS builds)
• I have tried:
  • Deleting & reinstalling mouse driver
  • Creating new profiles
  • multiple mouses
  • different cursors
  • removed logitech services from the start up

How can I resolve this issue?

Answer 1

I found that custom profiles are set as 'Themes' and the referenced cursors only happen at save or reload.

To fix this: make a copy of the referenced cursors and paste them into the C:\Windows\Cursor folder to be called upon start up. Then re-find the cursors stored in that windows cursor location (default location themes look at - regardless if you change them manually)

Answer 2

The solution of copying custom cursors inside Windows\Cursor folder works. But I found that it also works if you copy them to other system folders outside Windows, like ProgramData. Finally, I found that the background problem is another.

Windows stores cursor configuration in Registry under key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Cursors

If your custom cursor file is located inside any folder under your profile, Windows rewrites its path using %UserProfile% variable. It seems that this is the offending part. If you go to that registry key and manually rewrite those full paths without using %UserProfile% variable, custom cursors will load normally at startup, wherever the files are located.

It’s still a bug, but at least it’s a cleaner workaround than copying files into Windows folders.