Constant flashing loading icon (blue circle) next to my mouse.

I thought I'd make a quick account to reply with my solution to this as I'd been suffering the exact same issue on a generic PC tower build.

For me it was actually caused by gmail of all things. If I have a gmail tab open in Chrome I get the blue circle blink next to my mouse pointer about every 5 seconds which is highly irritating. As soon as I close the gmail tab it goes away, so I presume that is probably related to gmail's automated mail check.

This is happening on my other machines as well - 1 is a laptop running W7 and the other is another tower running W8.1. If gmail is open on a tab on any of the 3 different OS's I get the blinky blue circle.

SP2mhc said:

I thought I'd make a quick account to reply with my solution to this as I'd been suffering the exact same issue on a generic PC tower build.

For me it was actually caused by gmail of all things. If I have a gmail tab open in Chrome I get the blue circle blink next to my mouse pointer about every 5 seconds which is highly irritating. As soon as I close the gmail tab it goes away, so I presume that is probably related to gmail's automated mail check.

This is happening on my other machines as well - 1 is a laptop running W7 and the other is another tower running W8.1. If gmail is open on a tab on any of the 3 different OS's I get the blinky blue circle.

I actually registered just to expand upon this, as well. I had the same problem with the blinking working symbol next to my cursor.and was searching through these replies to no avail. Then I saw yours and was like: Oh, that's something I actually hav
that I can check.

I didn't want to close my gmail tab if I could help it, though...so I went to check in the settings for anything I could turn off. Lo and behold, I found something that seems to have stopped the blue circle from popping up even with a gmail tab open.

To fix this particular problem with gmail happening, you simply need to turn off the gmail "Chat" service in Gmail's settings.There's a tab there so it should be really easy to find. Of course, if you actually use this service (which I don't), then this won't solve your problem...but it's what fixed it for me.

Hope that helps someone else, as well~ :)

11.5.2022

Edge updated today and now the Process called "Utility: Network Service" keep using CPU, causing the little blue "busy" indicator to come on for a split second, every 2 seconds, right next to wherever my mouse is sitting on the desktop. Very annoying. When I disconnect from the internet, the little busy indicator stops and so does the "Network Service" usage of my laptops CPU.

The latest version of MS Edge is the culprit. It's the only thing that updated today, and expanding that process in task manager shows the continual Network Service activity.

Just posting this in case anyone else notices this weird behavior in their cursor/pointer all of a sudden.

Maybe I'll just download and use the BETA version of Edge going forward. I have another P.C. with that version and it's not having this annoying issue. Never did. Very strange.