How to prevent Windows themes from changing mouse cursor settings

This guide will walk through the steps to prevent a Windows Theme from changing the mouse cursor settings on Windows 10, 8.x, and 7.

Mauro Huculak @Pureinfotech

January 16, 2015

2016-11-19T17:29:32-05:00

Windows Themes became popular on Windows 7, the same packages, now can be used on Windows 8.1, and they’re also compatible with Windows 10. A Windows Theme is a combination of unique wallpapers, colors, sounds, and mouse cursor settings that they apply to your system as soon as you double-click the .themepack file that you usually get from Microsoft, just to make your computer a little more interesting.

The problem is that when the theme changes settings that you do not want. For example, my primary PC features a retina display, because all the elements on the screen look very small natively, I have to change the Windows DPI settings and I have to make the mouse cursor a bigger than usual. However, every time I install a new theme, the mouse settings are reset to its default size.

It’s not a big deal, but it becomes annoying over time. If you have specific settings for your mouse cursor, you can prevent a Windows Theme from changing the current cursor settings by simply modifying the a key in the Windows Registry. This guide will walk through the steps to to change the modify the Registry on Windows, so everytime you install a new theme the mouse cursor settings won’t change.

How to stop a Windows Theme from changing mouse cursor size

Use the Run command and open the Registry Editor as an administrator. You can use the Windows + R keyboard shortcut to bring up the Run command and type regedit to open the Registry Editor.

Navigate through the following path:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes

Inside the folder you’ll see the ThemeChangesMousePointers DWORD key, which probably have the value of 1. Double-click the DWORD and simply change the value to 0.

That’s all you have to do. This will disable themes from changing the mouse pointer settings.

Important: Please note that modifying the Registry can cause problems to your system. It is assumed that you know what you are doing and that you have created a full back up of your system before following these instructions. You’ve been warned!

You will also notice the ThemeChangeDesktopIcons DWORD key. This particular key hold the setting to allow or prevent a theme from changing desktop icons, if the theme features a set of new icons. However, the Windows Themes you download from Microsoft aren’t likely to feature new set of icons, so you probably don’t need to modify this setting.