Ubuntu – Mouse Pointer Icon on VGA screen changes by itself

14.04mousemouse pointermultiple-monitors

I've been trying to find a solution to this all day but I'm having no joy.

I have a Dual Monitor setup for my Lenovo B50-45 running Ubuntu. Both monitors are identical (Philips 274E). One is attached via HDMI and the other is via VGA.

I have a strange situation where after a couple of hours use, the mouse cursor on the VGA monitor changes to what looks like 5 dots with downwards pointing arrows beside them (see this picture). I had to take a photo with my phone as when I took a screen shot that includes the pointer, it showed as a normal pointer icon. I've no idea exactly what causes it to change.

Anyone any idea how I can fix this without having to restart the computer (which fixes it)?

Edit 1: Well today the mouse icon on the HDMI monitor changed while the VGA monitor is fine. I have another question here that appears to be related to this issue but unusually, the system has not slowed down when the HDMI icon changed. No idea what's going on but it appears to be related to the AMD graphics driver

Edit 2: I'm finding the only solution is to change to the Xorg driver, restart the machine, change back to fglrx and restart the machine. If I don't do this then when I restart the machine I get these awful blocky graphics. I'm putting the issue down to AMD's buggy proprietory driver fglrx. Very frustrating. Might have to start using a different machine with the dual monitors

Best Answer

The solution is to move the mouse pointer between the two monitors repeatedly till this weird looking pointer is gone . Usually, within 2-6 quick transitions of mouse pointer between the monitor fixes it. And, no need to restart the computer. It is in fact related to the buggy AMD driver.

PS- Some nVidia drivers also have shown such behavior. This behavior has also been observed in Windows platform and other OSs.

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