Make insertion mouse cursor visible in dark Visual Studio editor

Question

I use a color theme with a very dark background, which works great except that VS2010 uses the default insertion point mouse cursor when the mouse is over the editor pane, and that cursor is black — making it nearly impossible to see (literally impossible if the background is actually black as opposed to just very dark).

Is there a straightforward way to tell VS2010 to use a light version of the insertion point mouse cursor instead?

Things I've tried so far:

1. I installed the Visual Studio Color Theme Editor (which enables theming of the rest of the UI, as opposed to just the editor) in hopes that it would do this automatically if I used one of its dark themes, but no such luck.

2. I tried using different mouse pointers in Control Panel, but even though the cursor changed in some cases (for instance, if I picked one of the "very large" schemes), it was still black and so nearly invisible.

Answer 1

Edit: In Windows 10 this setting is in a different place:

1. Open settings
2. Click Personalization
3. Click Themes in the right sidebar
4. Click Mouse Cursor
5. Select the Scheme called – Windows Black (system scheme)
6. Click Apply

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Original Answer:

I have the same problem in Visual Studio 2012 (Dark Theme) on a Windows 7 guest system running inside VirtualBox.

I have found a slightly better solution:

Basically, you can globally change the cursor scheme:

1. Open Control panel
2. Open Appearance and Personalization
3. Open Personalization
4. Finally – click Change mouse pointers.
5. Select the Scheme called – Windows Black (system scheme)

Makes your cursor nicely visible against the dark background while also working great on light backgrounds. Hope that helps!

Credit: http://www.marcusoft.net/2011/08/my-mouse-pointer-disappeared-in-visual.html