Mouse Without Borders "Use Service" disconnects Win 10 client from cross-border mousing

[stevemagruder]

Microsoft PowerToys version

0.70.0

Installation method

PowerToys auto-update

Running as admin

Yes

Area(s) with issue?

Mouse Utilities

Steps to reproduce

1. Set up Windows 11 system to use Mouse Without Borders as a "director", for lack of a better word. As part of this, set new security key that the Windows 10 system "client" will connect to.
2. Run MWB as a service on the Win 11 (director) system.
3. Set up Win 10 system on same network to use MWB as a client. Connect to Win 11 system's (director) key. Mousing across the screens work as expected.
4. Run MWB as a service on the Win 10 (client) system. It gets outlined in red on the director system, and it can't be moused to from the Win 11 (director).
5. Activate my hard switch to use Win 10 system, and stop running MWB as a service - now mousing between systems works again.

✔️ Expected Behavior

Running MWB as a service on the Win 10 client shouldn't have stopped the cross-border mousing capability. (Or should it have? Am I missing something?)

❌ Actual Behavior

Cross-border mousing stopped working per step 4 above.

Other Software

Windows 11 Home 22H2 Build 22621.1776 (director)
Windows 10 Home 22H2 Build 19045.3030 (client)

[stevemagruder]

By the way, thank you for this great tool. It's working well enough so that I could uninstall a dedicated app that was giving me even worse issues.

[yuyoyuppe]

Hi @stevemagruder, thank you for the report! MWB clients should work in all combinations of service/non-service. I have a similar setup as you (win 10 laptop + win 11 desktop) and couldn't reproduce your issue. Can you please try:

• connecting to the director machine again using the "Connect" button
• restarting PowerToys on both machines
• pressing "Refresh connections"

The red outline means that the keys are not matched.

[stevemagruder]

OK, here's the steps I took:

1. MWB working when directly connected to Win11 laptop and mousing to Win10 laptop.
2. Hard switched from Win11 laptop to Win10 laptop. (MWB still working)
3. Turned Use Service On. (MWB no longer working)
4. Connect to security key and pc name I was already supposedly connecting to. (MWB now working again)
5. Hard switched from Win10 laptop to Win11 laptop. (MWB still working)

OK, so it's now in a state where it's all working. But isn't it peculiar that turning Use Service on would knock out MWB like this, even if re-connectable?

[stevemagruder]

By the way, my Windows versions have changed since the original report:
Windows 11 Home 22H2 Build 22621.1778 (director laptop)
Windows 10 Home 22H2 Build 19045.3031 (client laptop)

[stevemagruder]

Also, I wanted to note a kind of side issue that I'm not sure is worthy to split into its own.
Before successfully running as a service on the Win10 laptop, and I was hard-connected to my Win11 laptop - whenever I moused over to install an app on the Win10 laptop, and the UAC window popped up, MWB stopped working.
But now that MWB is running as a service on Win10, that problem stopped happening.

[stevemagruder]

Unfortunately, keeping this running as a service on Win10 isn't something I can keep stable. I've had to roll back my Win10 laptop to not running this as a service.

[stevemagruder]

whenever I moused over to install an app on the Win10 laptop, and the UAC window popped up, MWB stopped working

I'm going to log this as a separate issue, as there's an issue every time UAC pops up.

[stevemagruder]

I just added a third device, this time another Win 11 laptop with the same version of Windows as the first (director) device. I was able to run MWB as a service on that with no issue.
So, this seems to be a Windows 10-related issue. No matter what I try, I can't get the service to work on the Win 10 laptop.

[stevemagruder]

I've poked around a bit and from a couple sources, it appears MWB uses .NET Framework 4.0.
The version of that on my Win11 laptops is 4.8.09032 and on the Win10 laptop, it's 4.8.04084.
Might this be something to consider?

[yuyoyuppe]

Thanks for the additional info, we'll look into it.

[stevemagruder]

I eliminated one possible cause. I upgraded to a Wi-Fi 6 / Wireless-AX card on the Windows 10 laptop. Doing that fixed random network drops, likely owing to now using a device driver for wireless that's around a month old compared to 4 years old before. Unfortunately, this upgrade did nothing to change the outlines of the above described problem.

[xBlueSoulx]

Hi @stevemagruder, thank you for the report! MWB clients should work in all combinations of service/non-service. I have a similar setup as you (win 10 laptop + win 11 desktop) and couldn't reproduce your issue. Can you please try:

• connecting to the director machine again using the "Connect" button
• restarting PowerToys on both machines
• pressing "Refresh connections"

The red outline means that the keys are not matched.

Thanks, this just solved my issue!

[stevemagruder]

Doing what I've already done per the same instructions above won't be of assistance. Thanks anyway.

[beggehorn]

I've been using Mouse Without Borders since it was first released as a Microsoft Garage project and since it has been rolled into PowerToys I've found it to have gained a few quirks.

I'm having the same issue reported here with my two machines Both are Win10 (latest) and I keep PowerToys updated on both.

I've found that I can only have "Use Service" enabled on one machine. I use that option on my secondary PC so that I can enter the passkey to unlock it using my primary PC. If I try to enable "Use Service" on my primary PC, MWB instantly loses the connection and no amount of restarting PowerToys, re-entering the credentials, or refreshing connections will resolve the issue.

In the past, I would reset MWB (by deleting the "MouseWithoutBorders" folder from "%localappdata%/Microsoft/PowerToys/" and set it up again to fix the issue.

Today, I discovered that turning off "Use Service" and the clicking "Uninstall Service" on my primary PC also worked to restore the connection.

There's clearly an issue with having "Use Service" enabled on both PCs.

[DevoyE]

Yes, this is the answer ^
the same exact thing happens to me when I have "Use Service" enabled on one computer (W11) and try to enable it on the other (W10)

[DevoyE]

But hm, when I try to uninstall the service on my main computer, I can't, and even with it just disabled, if I try to enable it on my other computer, it just disconnects (goes red), then disables itself after like 5-10 seconds and then immediately reconnects... There's gotta be some way to fix this? I don't have a mouse for my second computer so this powertoy is really helpful but it's quite difficult to login, and also if the computer does fall asleep then for some reason the connection is basically broken for no reason and I have to use a new code :/ which is pretty annoying to do with keyboard-only
thanks

[stevemagruder]

By the way, I've moved on from using MWB, first going back to Input Director (great if you're Windows-only in your network), then going to InputLeap (a fork of Barrier), as I have replaced Windows 10 with Linux Mint. So, it's Win11 <--> LM now. I'm saying this in case a future fix is done, as I won't be able to test it.