Pointer disappearing

[Jeikobu]

Yesterday I was opening a lot of windows on Firefox and doing a lot of stuff, maybe too much at a time, and was also (I think) doing something with the Finder and maybe Photoshop, and then suddenly the mouse's "pointer" hand disappeared. It'd only have the normal arrow, and if I hover over a link in the Firefox browser, or an app in my Dock, for example, it would still be the arrow, not the pointer. I could still make the "text" mouse signal show well, but not the pointer. Also, my mouse would disappear entirely with drawing tools in Photoshop and I had to hold the Apple command button to show where it was on the window. I tried running Disk Utility and everything checked out. Same with TechTool (I did everything but a Surface Scan). I also restarted the Mac and reset the PRAM. Still the same problems. I even tried holding command and tab to switch an app to try and refresh it. Finally, I tried the Force Quit option and making Finder relaunch. Still nothing. Today, for some reason, the pointer is showing up again in Firefox, and Photoshop seems to work fine, but it still acts weird on the Finder Dock. The other thing was the pointer being gone also made it impossible to get a pull down menu from a pull down menu. For example, under the Apple menu, you can go to Recent Items and another pull down will pop up showing the recent apps and files you've used. I would not have been able to make that second pull down come up. Now it works. More than anything now, I want to know why most of it is working again, and what the best way is to solve this problem in the future. Thanks and sorry for the long message.

[SLK001]

Maybe it's time to discard your toys and get a real computer.

[Case]

Add a new user account (or switch to another if you have more than one), and see if happens there too. If not, it is likely related to a user account specific file gone bad.

[terryj]

You say in you computer details you are running OS X 10.4.11. But you don't say anything about your actual computer:
is it a G3, G4 or G5? Do you have 256mb of ram, 512mb of ram, or 1gb of ram?
How fast is your processor?
What versions of FireFox and Adobe Photoshop are you using?

I find that on a dual 1ghz G4, running 2GB of Ram, with both Firefox 3.68 and Adobe Photoshop CS3 open,
while processing a lot of large res photos, while watching high res Youtube videos, that I often overtax the CPU and the RAM, and the finder
often will start doing strange things, such as give me a spinning beachball, or the cursor will momentarily disappear.
Usually shutting down everything, and rebooting, clears things up.

Barring if your machine has a decent processor, and has at least 1GB of ram, I would look into the user account as brother Case suggested.
It isn't intrusive, and working in a new user account for a few days will easily point out if it is your account,
or something else with the computer. From that point , I would try and reinstall ( or clone form backup) a fresh copy of
the OS to rule it out if it keeps occurring.

[Jeikobu]

Sorry for the lack of computer info, it totally skipped my mind to mention it.

It's a G4. Memory is "1.75 GB DDR SDRAM". CPU speed is 1 GHz. Firefox is the newest available I think. (version 3.6.10) Adobe Photoshop CS is version 8.0.

As you said, shutting down helps. It just concerns me that it's done it twice now in a couple days and I haven't really been doing much differently than usual. Also last night something weird happened. The computer was acting fine, and I left it for a while. I have it set to go to screensaver pretty quickly if it sits idly, and normally nothing goes wrong. However, when I came back and started using the computer again, it was acting very weird. I had to fight with it to even open a folder in the Finder (I had to double-click more slowly, for example), and the mouse was dragging a lot on the screen. A restart cleared it up, but again, that it happened at all still concerns me.

Maybe I'll try the idea about a new account and see what happens.

[terryj]

The computer was acting fine, and I left it for a while. I have it set to go to screensaver pretty quickly if it sits idly, and normally nothing goes wrong. However, when I came back and started using the computer again, it was acting very weird. I had to fight with it to even open a folder in the Finder (I had to double-click more slowly, for example), and the mouse was dragging a lot on the screen.

Aaah, Now THAT. I have experienced firsthand.
Your Video Card is about to bite the dust.
That's what happened to mine right before it went kaput on my G4.
"Mouse would drag, screen refreshing when opening a folder, or document,
seemed like I was fighting the computer just for it to get it to work.."
When it finally goes kaput, the computer doesn't boot.

Replace it ASAP. I got a replacement off of eBay for sub $100,
and actually got a model that had double the memory of my stock one.