Some people can navigate their systems without ever lifting their hands from their keyboards. For the rest of us, the mouse is pretty darn important, which is why Nvidia released GeForce Hotfix Driver Version 431.68 this morning to resolve problems affecting the mouse pointer.
Nvidia said in its release notes that a bug made it so the "mouse cursor may render incorrectly after exiting a game." It's kind of surprising that problems like this don't pop up more often, considering how different games customize the mouse pointer. Many use custom pointers for navigating menus. Some make the pointer disappear entirely while in-game; others have to replace it with a crosshair.
Yet, the pointer is expected to return to normal as soon as someone leaves a game (or simply Alt-Tabs to another program). People are willing to forgive some problems introduced alongside new graphics drivers, but a disappearing mouse pointer is hard to accept. What are folks supposed to do, learn a bunch of keyboard shortcuts? Preposterous! That slippery slope leads straight to the likes of Emacs and Vim.
Kidding aside, it's good that Nvidia has addressed this issue, and it should help people enjoy the benefits of the GeForce Game Ready 431.60 WHQL driversreleased earlier this week. That release improved support for two upcoming Wolfenstein games, prepared systems for the new RTX 2080 Super GPU and expanded the G-Sync Compatible program to three additional monitors from HP and AOC.
GeForce Hotfix Driver Version 431.68 is available now from Nvidia's website. The update is offered in two variants, the Windows 10 64-bit Standard Driver and the Windows 10 64-bit DCH Driver, but Nvidia said the only difference between the two is the way they're packaged.
