"can't read value of key error" pop up

[pcandme]

Hello,

I'm using a donation edition ver. 14.5.

An error pop-up window which shows "Can't read value of key 'HKCU\Control Panel\Curosrs' (error 234: More data is available.)" keeps appearing while I'm moving my mouse cursor on the main panel for some time past.

The version is up-to-date, and I still get the message, and it's very annoying.

Moving mouse on the menu panel is ok, no message. I think when the cursor crosses the components(?), it will happen.

It's very annoying. Please fix this or tell me a workaround. My OS information is following:

Edition Windows 11 Pro
Version 25H2
Installed on ‎12/‎4/‎2024
OS build 26200.6725
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.26100.253.0

Thanks in advance!

[xCSxXenon]

This is a Windows issue, not a FFS one. The registry key that handles what cursor to display is broken/corrupted. Did this happen before you updated to 25H2?
Maybe do a repair install or reset the theme/mouse pointer options?

[pcandme]

Did this happen before you updated to 25H2?

Unfortunately. I don't know, but it started to happen recently.

Maybe do a repair install or reset the theme/mouse pointer options?

I did nothing to the theme/mouse pointer, but how can I repair install or reset anyway?

[xCSxXenon]

Download the Installation tool from Microsoft and run it

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/4376920/(article)-how-to-perform-a-repair-upgrade-using-th

[pcandme]

I have tried an old version, 14.0 and the error pop-up doesn't show up. If this is a workaround, I wanna use old version, but there's no donation edition downloads in the archive page. Can I get a setup file of an older version of donation edition? Or is there any way to activate it with the .license file I have?

[pcandme]

I have tried an old version, 14.0 and the error pop-up doesn't show up. If this is a workaround, I wanna use old version, but there's no donation edition downloads in the archive page. Can I get a setup file of an older version of donation edition? Or is there any way to activate it with the .license file I have?

Alright, I tried 14.4 and still get the error pop-up. For 14.3, I don't have anymore. Now I think I can stick to 14.3, so please teach me how I can activate the donation edition.

[Zenju]

Can you post a screenshot, to get some idea where this error is coming from, and what application is responsible for displaying it?

[xCSxXenon]

I have tried an old version, 14.0 and the error pop-up doesn't show up. If this is a workaround, I wanna use old version, but there's no donation edition downloads in the archive page. Can I get a setup file of an older version of donation edition? Or is there any way to activate it with the .license file I have?

Alright, I tried 14.4 and still get the error pop-up. For 14.3, I don't have anymore. Now I think I can stick to 14.3, so please teach me how I can activate the donation edition.

You would have to keep an archive of your old versions, they can't be provided for you retroactively

[pcandme]

I have tried an old version, 14.0 and the error pop-up doesn't show up. If this is a workaround, I wanna use old version, but there's no donation edition downloads in the archive page. Can I get a setup file of an older version of donation edition? Or is there any way to activate it with the .license file I have?

Alright, I tried 14.4 and still get the error pop-up. For 14.3, I don't have anymore. Now I think I can stick to 14.3, so please teach me how I can activate the donation edition.

You would have to keep an archive of your old versions, they can't be provided for you retroactively

As you know, the donation edition supports auto-update, so I don't have to download the installer every time a new version is released. I installed it a long time ago, only I have is too old version. Anyway, I just keep the non-donation edition of the version until a new version can fix the problem.

[xCSxXenon]

Can you post a screenshot, to get some idea where this error is coming from, and what application is responsible for displaying it?

Also, do this

[pcandme]

Can you post a screenshot, to get some idea where this error is coming from, and what application is responsible for displaying it?

Also, do this

I re-installed the latest version and recorded the screen. I'm not sure if the GIF file can show well below.



If you can't see the above GIF image, please use the link below:
https://imgur.com/a/nDiIylV

[Zenju]

The error is coming from wxWidgets apparently. Could be data corruption in the registry. Can you post a screenshot of HKCU\Control Panel\Cursors as as shown by regedit.exe

[pcandme]

The error is coming from wxWidgets apparently. Could be data corruption in the registry. Can you post a screenshot of HKCU\Control Panel\Cursors as as shown by regedit.exe

Actually, I checked it out and I think there's no problem. I don't know why it doesn't happen in the older version(v14.3).

[Zenju]

Here's the data corruption:

data corruption.PNG (6.62 KiB) Viewed 924 times

This should be DWORD.

PS: ContactVisualization, GestureVisualization, and Scheme Source also must be DWORD.

[pcandme]

Here's the data corruption:
data corruption.PNG
This should be DWORD.

PS: ContactVisualization, GestureVisualization, and Scheme Source also must be DWORD.

Alright, then now I'm gonna study how to change the type of the keys. It seems that I have to delete and create them again with the correct type and the same value. I will try so anyway. I don't know why they are corrupted.

Btw, I'm still curious that why the error doesn't happen in the ver. 14.3 in the same situation. The old version doesn't use the reg keys maybe?

Thank you very much.

[pcandme]

It's now fixed by correcting the type of the reg keys!

Thank you!

[Zenju]

This is caused by a recent change in the wxWidgets framework:
https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets/commit/e1095aafbb7f8c902de68d952164163e73d8c0c9

The question is if REG_SZ instead of REG_DWORD for "CursorBaseSize" is legitimate or not. If "yes", then it's a wxWidgets bug, if "no" then it's data corruption. On my Windows systems it's REG_DWORD, so I'm leaning towards latter, unless more users experience this error.

[dave9]

I'm not sure what the definition of data corruption should be in this case but it doesn't appear to be that.

I wonder if OP's Windows installation was an upgrade from a past version, because I also encountered this same problem trying to run the current FFS v 14.5 for the first time today and did not have this issue running... IIRC it was v 13.9 previously.

However I was backing up something on an old WIndows 7 system so I wonder if the registry value used to be a string instead of DWORD and this was inherited when an in-place upgrade to newer version of windows was done, though I have another system that does not have this CursorBaseSize key at all, leading me to wonder if it's created if windows' default screen scaling is changed because it is changed to a scaling factor of 150% on the system where I have the string value but that reg value does not exist on a system still at 100% screen scaling.

I checked the registry and ALL of the entries for HKCU\Control Panel\Cursors key were strings except DWORD Scheme Source, and I too, solved this by deleting the CursorBaseSize (string value 64 in my case) then created CursorBaseSize (DWORD hex value 64). I did not need to change any of the other string based entries under /Cursors to make the error go away, just CursorBaseSize.

[xCSxXenon]

With this info all in mind, are either of those two affected by this using anything that modifies Windows' theme settings? It could be builtin theme configurations or something 3rd party like WinAero Tweaker?

[pcandme]

I wonder if OP's Windows installation was an upgrade from a past version, because I also encountered this same problem trying to run the current FFS v 14.5 for the first time today and did not have this issue running... IIRC it was v 13.9 previously.

My memory may be wrong bcoz it's been a quite long time since I bought my PC, but I think I didn't upgrade my Windows, it's been Windows 11 from the first place.

With this info all in mind, are either of those two affected by this using anything that modifies Windows' theme settings? It could be builtin theme configurations or something 3rd party like WinAero Tweaker?

Btw, I'm using MS's PowerToys which is a tweak tool, so this may affect it?

[dave9]

With this info all in mind, are either of those two affected by this using anything that modifies Windows' theme settings? It could be builtin theme configurations or something 3rd party like WinAero Tweaker?

In my case it was a WIn7 box, running for many years, so it's entirely possible that something modified theme settings... well over a decade ago at least, so I really can't recall but yes the theme on it is very heavily modified.

On the other hand, the other Win7 system I checked, had no 3rd party theme/tweak tools ever used and didn't have the CursorBaseSize entry at all, but all other values in the Cursors subkey were string not DWORD values except for Scheme Source, so I am suspecting that older Windows OS used string values.

I wonder though, is this registry check even necessary? I had never encountered this error before the latest version of FFS (or really I should state, I've used FFS for years with a few version changes along the way, but was not running the immediately prior version when upgraded to this latest version) on that old system running many apps, many years.