Mouse moving out of the Game with dual screen

I'm using a dual-screen setup and some games seem to not lock the mouse to the screen, especially in Battlefield 2142 a while ago I often left the game with my cursor, which was bad when I tried to turn around quickly to shoot someone, suddenly I was back in Windows and quite dead in the game because I clicked on the Windows desktop or another window on the second screen which caused BF2142 to minimize.

The last game I played a few days ago that had this problem was Stubbs the Zombie (of which I heard here on GSE) which didn't even try to keep the mouse on the screen, I couldn't turn right much or my mouse ended up on the second screen minimizing the game when I clicked at the wrong moment.

I remember a few other games where I had this problem a little longer in the past, so is there a solution to this problem without forcing me to disable the second monitor?

Solution 1:

There may be a built in Windows way to do it but this Lifehacker link suggests a tiny program called MouseJail to keep the mouse on the correct screen.

Solution 2:

Using a multi-monitor system left me way unsatisfied in certain needs on my W7 system, so I bought http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/ (after carefully evaluating it). One of it's useful features I just later discovered was that I can bind a shortcut to disable the other monitor (which ever this is is configurable).

since its seldom I can really make use of the second monitor, I actually often prefer to disable it during gameplay and re-enable it afterwards. That automatically saved me from the mouse moving problem. It may be overkill of MouseJail just fits your needs though.

In my case CTRL-ALT-Q disables my left (secondary) monitor and re-enables it upon pressing again. Works when being in most games, in a few it doesn't and you'd have to perform this before starting the game. Upon re-enabling the other monitor again, window positions are restored properly too.

Windows 7 also has a built-in shortcut to disable or change your multi-monitor settings. Windows Key + P will bring up a dialog to change options. It's very quick and convenient.