Multiple mouse cursors on a Windows Desktop

Job Vermeulen (admin) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 19:23:18 +0000

Ever thought of two mouse cursors at the same time? After googling I found a SDK from Microsoft, to make multi mouse available WITHIN your own application. I was wondering if this can be done system width.

The answer is YES!

There’s an open source project named CPNMouse (kinda outdated, last update was in 2004) but it works!

Download the custom driver (make sure you have the binary) from this website.

Select your mouse in device manager, and update the driver to the downloaded on. Instructions

If windows tells you there is no supported hardware in this driver follow these instructions (easy to fix!):

Windows 2000/XP/2003

Open Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Information. If this is not available on your computer, you may also be able to use BusHound to obtain the information.
In this program select Components -> Input -> Pointing Devices
The information in under PNP Device Id is what you need. It is in the form USB\VID_XXXX&PID_YYYY\
You need the numbers XXXX and YYYY
You must add a line to cpnmouse.inf. The line is “%CPNGroup.DeviceDesc1% = usbinst, HID\VID_XXXX&PID_YYYY“, where XXXX and YYYY are the numbers found earlier. You should add the line just after the other lines looking just like it
If you send the numbers to me, I will add them to the distribution

After you successfully installed this driver (on both mouses!) download and run the ordinary-binary application. This starts two mouse pointers witch can move separated.

It works, but the scroll function is lost (after the application is starts, not by installing the driver).

Try it yourself

PS: It’s working on Windows XP SP3

Extra link:

Funny little multi mouse game:

http://www.nekogames.jp/mt/2008/01/cursor10.html

My Daily Computer Solutions » working with two mouses

Multiple mouse cursors on a Windows Desktop