Multiple mouse cursors on Windows 7

Question

We are using CPNMouse for an application running on Windows XP. One mouse device is detached from the normal event queue, so we can get it's position and events and draw the cursor ourselves.

Unfortunately, CPNMouse does not work on Windows Vista/7 (see here). Is there any library/SDK that provides the same capabilities on Windows 7?

Just to clarify - we want the "normal" cursor to be present and to draw another cursor, that should be mapped to a different mouse device.

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Update: CPNMouse is no longer supported and its previously "open source" withdrawn from SourceForge. Only this legacy documentation page exists on the official CPN Tools site.

Looks like only commercial products are available...

• MiniFrame SoftXpand
• MultiMouse

If anyone has a copy of the original source from SourceForce please post a link here... Assuming the original license was a standard SourceForge (open to share/expand) variant it should be okay for someone to fork it to a new project for continued development (of a free tool).

Answer 1

You should use the dsf from the windows ddk to create an emulated mouse device then any program can accept input from that specific emulated mouse device and draw the pointer it self. So any program you create will have multiple mouse devices in it. Its sad to say that its not possible to have multiple pointers in windows 7 OS though they specifically dont support it. So you would have to draw the poiner onto the screen yourself. Im afraid the point is you need to draw a pointer yourself for the mouse

Answer 2

Take a look at the MultiPoint SDK, which allows for up to 25 cursors on the same display, which also supports Windows 7.

Answer 3

You want the "Raw Input" API which comes with the Windows Platform SDK: MSDN: About Raw Input