Windows – How to make the mouse cursor render with software instead of hardware

Couldn't find anything online, and I figured this shouldn't be too hard to make, so I went ahead and built one myself. Requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 in order to run.

Polynomial's Mouse Inverter (freeware, under CC-BY-NC-SA license) - (Alt Link)

Let me know how it works out for you :)

Sorry this took so long, but here's the code that actually does the inversion:

internal class Inverter
{
    private Point pos = Cursor.Position;

    private bool invertX;

    private bool invertY;

    private bool running;

    private bool exit;

    public bool InvertX
    {
        get
        {
            return this.invertX;
        }
        set
        {
            this.invertX = value;
            if (this.InvertSettingsChanged != null)
            {
                this.InvertSettingsChanged(this, new EventArgs());
            }
        }
    }

    public bool InvertY
    {
        get
        {
            return this.invertY;
        }
        set
        {
            this.invertY = value;
            if (this.InvertSettingsChanged != null)
            {
                this.InvertSettingsChanged(this, new EventArgs());
            }
        }
    }

    public bool Running
    {
        get
        {
            return this.running;
        }
    }

    public Inverter(bool x, bool y)
    {
        this.invertX = x;
        this.invertY = y;
        this.pos = Cursor.Position;
    }

    private void MouseLoop()
    {
        Thread.CurrentThread.IsBackground = true;
        Thread.CurrentThread.Priority = ThreadPriority.Highest;
        while (!this.exit)
        {
            Point position = Cursor.Position;
            int right = (this.invertX ? this.pos.X - (position.X - this.pos.X) : position.X);
            if (this.invertX)
            {
                if (right < 2)
                {
                    right = 2;
                }
                if (right > Screen.FromPoint(position).Bounds.Right - 2)
                {
                    Rectangle bounds = Screen.FromPoint(position).Bounds;
                    right = bounds.Right - 2;
                }
            }
            int bottom = (this.invertY ? this.pos.Y - (position.Y - this.pos.Y) : position.Y);
            if (this.invertY)
            {
                if (bottom < 2)
                {
                    bottom = 2;
                }
                if (bottom > Screen.FromPoint(position).Bounds.Bottom - 2)
                {
                    Rectangle rectangle = Screen.FromPoint(position).Bounds;
                    bottom = rectangle.Bottom - 2;
                }
            }
            Cursor.Position = new Point(right, bottom);
            this.pos = Cursor.Position;
            Thread.Sleep(1);
        }
        this.exit = false;
    }

    public void Start()
    {
        this.pos = Cursor.Position;
        this.running = true;
        (new Thread(new ThreadStart(this.MouseLoop))).Start();
    }

    public void Stop()
    {
        this.running = false;
        this.exit = true;
    }

    public event EventHandler InvertSettingsChanged;
}

I just pulled this out of the executable with Telerik JustDecompile, because I don't have the original code. You can extract an entire VS project with JD if you need the full application code.

Windows 8.1 supports turning off hot corners in the Taskbar --> Properties --> Navigation menu.

If you don't have 8.1 you can turn it off in the registry by setting the following DWORD keys to 1 under KEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell

DisableTLcorner

DisableCharmsHint