In-home streaming invisible cursor FIX!

[Spyderborg]

I am running in-home streaming on a headless PC to my laptop, and in many games I was having an issue where my cursor was invisible, making it nearly impossible to play. A Valve employee confirmed here:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream/discussions/1/540738052135928090/
that it is an issue with Windows 10 hiding the mouse cursor when no mouse is plugged into the machine. Every topic I found always ended with the OP saying they fixed it simply by plugging a mouse into the host PC.

For me, however, I do not have a spare mouse handy, and it seems asinine to have a mouse dedicated to being a "dummy" just to be able to play games. So I started trying stuff out on my own, and I am very glad to have found a solution!

1) Search "mouse key" in the Start menu and click the result reading "Change mouse key settings"

2) Under the "Mouse Keys" section, turn on "Use numeric keypad to move mouse around the screen"

3) Launch the on-screen keyboard that comes with Windows, click the "Options" key in the lower left, and check "Turn on numeric keypad." Turn on NumLock.

4) The on-screen keyboard doesn't need to stay open while the game is running, so you can close it. You should now be able to use your mouse while streaming from a headless PC.

I hope this helps someone; I sure wish someone had figured this out before.

[Misato Wifeguy]

It helped me! Thanks!

[Sandroid]

Just wanted to say thanks as well. Great workaround!

[MikkoCatz]

"Windows 10 hiding the mouse cursor when no mouse is plugged into the machine"

Yeah that sounds like something Microsoft would do to support the OS being utilized on tablets, I run Windows 10 on a VM which mimics a mouse being plugged in, so I have not experienced this.

Windows 10 also wouldn't utilize the GPU when a monitor or a headless dummy plug wasn't plugged into the GPU and prevents the audio card from pushing audio off the host machine while streaming in favor of sending it through the stream, all problems I never had to work around while utilizing Windows 7 for streaming.

[Spyderborg]

All I had to do was buy a cheap HDMI dummy plug for the video issue, and installed a free piece of software to fix the audio. Works great

[MikkoCatz]

What software did you use to fix the audio to stream push? I looked it up on the forums when I was working on the server but never saw anything info that helped.

Because Steam streaming now offers 5.1 encoded off any audio card and I had setup the audio card and long fiber run while using the Windows 7 server when Steam only pushed stereo streaming,

I ended up relocating my sound card to the client, which is what I wanted when I first setup the streaming server years ago but forgot and wasted cycles into finding a solution.

[Spyderborg]

I used something called Virtual Audio Cable:

http://www.vb-audio.com/Cable/index.htm

Very barebones and simple. All I did was install it and suddenly I had audio. Didn't have to do any configuration in the program itself.

Apparently there is a software solution to the video issue, but it's not quite so simple. I messed with it a little bit and gave up; $10 for a dummy plug isn't so bad.

[MikkoCatz]

Neat solution

[SirBarther]

How you figured that out, I don't know. That it works, I do know! Thanks!

[benjy]

Thank you, that did it.

[Maprikan]

Thanks

[Jaskura Lunaris]

Thank you! Mine still wasn't showing up for some reason another thread had this bit of advice and it worked afterward:

If your Mouse Keys doesn't work even after you've enabled it from Control Panel, simply unplug your mouse and do Left Alt + Left Shift + Num Lock to enable it to work.

[[REM]Rapid.Eye.Movement]

Just coming by to say thanks for posting this, worked perfectly!

[nullJaeger]

Worked great! Thanks for the tip!

[ARio]

Thanks!!!

[Scufi]

AWESOME! Fixes my issue!