There's a spot on the the panel somewhere near the "peanut" for the panel and my clock, when I mouse over it with the exact right motion it turns the pointer into a long line.

I've tried changing the pointer back through K->Settings->System Settings->Input Devices->Mouse->Cursor Theme
and while it changes the look of the line, I don't actually get back to something that looks like the normal pointer.

The only thing that I've found to change it back is to go over the exact same spot with the exact right motion.

The interesting thing is that I had a similar problem in KDE 3.5 and wouldn't have thought it would have been brought into the KDE 4.x rewrite.

Is there some way to prevent this from happening in the first place?

I'm using Kubuntu 10.04 LTR.

[strycat@catbox:~/]$ kde4-config --version
Qt: 4.7.0
KDE Development Platform: 4.5.1 (KDE 4.5.1)
kde4-config: 1.0

Never seen this before. Can you provide a screenshot of this?

Hi I'm having the same problem.
I've tried to take a screen shot with KSnapShot but the cursor is not included in the image.

Any suggestions for another program or options?

By the way the cursor looks like lots of little cursors on top of each other.
This happened while I moving widgets and changing options in the panel.

This certainly seems like a problem in X.. if you change to a virtual terminal and back, does anything change?

I presume you mean Ctrl+Alt+F1 and back again.
No this doesn't change anything.

If you use Desktop Effects, does disabling them and re-enabling them have any effect?

Sorry for resurrecting this from the land of dead threads, but I've the same problem...

Kid press up some magic keys and bang, the cursor becomes a vertica ong line made up of tiny cursors... Pretty annoying.

Any idea to change it back without rebooting?

Have you checked the Mouse and Accessibility settings in System Settings? Can you reproduce under a new user?

bcooksley wrote:Have you checked the Mouse and Accessibility settings in System Settings? Can you reproduce under a new user?

Not sure, if I can reproduce it, because I really don't know how to "get" the cursor on that shape... My kid just presses a lot of keys on the keyboard, and bang cursor is long line...

System config: Kde 4.6.4 with fglrx ati proprietary drivers on Kubuntu 11.04, but on previous versions it also happened.

Things that I've tried:

- Switch to console and back to graphic mode, doesn't solve it
- Changing system settings, namely cursor icons, doesn't solve it.

Anyway, is not serious, and according to a google search it seems to be Firefox related???? Well Firefox was active...

Hi.
I see that topic is very old, but the bug is still present so I will try to give some attention to it
While I'm typing, my mouse cursor is corrupted (broken, converted into dotted line or is just broken in few pieces).
I know how to reproduce bug. I can always reproduce it.
All I need to do is connect second screen to my laptop, set extern screen as main (so that start menu and clock comes to extern screen), and pull the cursor from the very right-bottom edge (where clock is) to the right (literally, try to get mouse out off screen), and then pull back to the middle of screen. If fails first time, you should try to do this few more times, and cursor will be broken. Interesting, when I take screenshoot with mouse cursor it shows normal cursor. Also, I think that is important that screen is wider than actual size (when you take screenshot, you must see normal screen + black gap). My mouse cursor really goes out of screen (to that black gap), because when I'm returning it to the visible surface it takes some short time to get it back.
Here is image, with black gap, but the cursor is normal (is normal only on picture): http://s22.postimg.org/81y48yu6p/black_gap.jpg

P.S. Also, if I repeat steps for breaking cursor, after few times cursor will be (but maybe) returned in normal shape.
Kernel: 3.7.10-1.16
Xorg: 1.13.2
KDE: 4.10.5 release 1
openSUSE 12.3
fglrx 12.104-1-x86_64

Let me know if there is something else I can provide for helping debug this issue.

UPDATE:
I found "workaround" for problem. I just changed resolution using xrandr (xrandr --output CRT1 --mode 1920x1080 --rate 60).
Now there is no black gap, and if I repeat steps from above I can't reproduce it anymore.
So, there is problem in KDE -> Configure Desktop -> Display and monitor settings, because when I set from there resolution 1920x108 I get my screen + black gap.

The display of the correct cursor in screenshots, while the screen displays a broken cursor is a strong indicator this is a bug in the graphics drivers.
Are you running the latest fglrx drivers for your graphics card?

The latest drivers was fglrx 12.104-3-x86_64 at the time when I was last checked. But I use 12.104-1-x86_64 because from drivers 12.104-2-x86_64 and above I experienced problems. E.g. when typing letters starts to disappear and many other problems. With 12.104-1-x86_64 everything works fine, except this problem with mouse pointer. But also, this problem is solved if second monitor is adjusted with xrandr. I am more concerned that new drivers make problems, but this is off topic.

Okay. There is not much else you can try i'm afraid, other than an older driver if one exists.
As the fglrx driver is proprietary, only ATI can fix bugs and other flaws it has - i'd suggest reporting your issues to them.

It might be worth disabling compositing (desktop effects) to see if that has an impact though. I would suggest logging out and back in again after doing that to flush out any lingering traces of graphical driver issues.

Quite an old thread, I realize, but I'm seeing this too.

I am running KDE on Arch Linux, and sometimes the pointer will become a long line of tiny pointers. Changing the pointer theme doesn't fix it, and changing the size of the pointer doesn't until I select the largest one (72px), which looks normal (though comically huge). But when I change it back then the problem persists.

The last time it happened, I tried moving the cursor over a number of different screen elements to see what would happen. After hovering over the panel tool box at the far end of the panel, the cursor became corrupted in many exciting and interesting ways, and wound up sort of ghosted and broken in a way I have never seen before and am at a loss to describe well.