Sometimes the most aggravating things in life are the smallest, simplest ones.

One of those things is "losing" your computer mouse's cursor.

You can't figure out where it is. You swirl the mouse around on the mouse pad, hoping to find the cursor. You curse.

Some people reboot the computer, knowing that the cursor would come back after a reboot.

Relax. It's easy to fix that. Today's tip will give you a way to find out where the cursor is hiding. This works in all versions of Windows - although I haven't tried it with Windows 7

1. Assuming that you can find the mouse's cursor, left-click on the Start Button
2. On the Start Menu that appears, Left-click on "Mouse"
3. In the box that appears (see below),
   • in the row of tabs at the top, Left-click on "Pointer Options"
   • Where the screen says "Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key," left-click once in the checkbox. A check mark should appear in the ox; if the check mark doesn't appear, click again.
4. Left-click OK

That's it! Tap either CTRL key. A circular "target" will flash on the screen. The target is showing you where the cursor is, um, hiding.