Mouse pointer stuck in box at centre of screen

User Support
1

Hi there folks,
I’m having an intermittant problem with my mouse pointer and, anonyingly, the only way to recover from it is to restart my machine as once this happens I can’t interact with computer at all.

On occasion the mouse pointer will get stuck in an invisible box at the centre of the sctreen. The cursor will not move beyond the boundy of this box. It will then disapear entirly for a few seconds and then reapear but still stuck in the box. No keys on the keyboard do anything either.

I actually have two machines on my desktop and they are running through a KVM switch and this issue sometimes happens when I switch from my qubes machine to the other machine on the switch, but not always. Other times it happens after I’ve come back to the qubes machine and the screen has locked. I put in my login password and there it is, stuck in it’s little box again.

Does anyone have any ideas what might be making this happen and how to prevent it or recover from it?

I’m not sure what specific information would be needed to diagnose this problem so I’ll tell you anything else that is needed.

Cheers :slight_smile:

2

It is probably xscreensaver, it keeps cursor inside its box and everything disappears in several seconds.
Do you get in such situation after keeping PC without activity for some time?

Try when you get in such situation to enter your password, press Enter. Before entering password move a mouse or press Ctrl to get cursor visible. NOTE: change password to something not-private before that, just in case, my guess is wrong and you enter it in some application by mistake.

Also you can disable this locking app completely and replace it if possible.

3

Thanks for the reply,

As I can’t predictably repeat the problem I’m not sure of the answer to some of these questions but iirc I’ve never noticed it after a period of inactivity unless of course it goes to the screen where I have to put my password in… when that happens most of the time everything is fine when I get back in, just occasionally I get put in my box lol. I’ll certainly try putting in a password the next time it happens.
How do I go about removing the locking app? Not something I’ve ever done before