How to set Cursor blink rate = 1, or 1/2 second?

I guess they want you to pick it visually, but in the registry at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\CursorBlinkRate you can see it's a value in milliseconds.

Here are the values going from the leftmost slider notch to the right:

  • Never blink
  • 1.2 seconds
  • 1.1 seconds
  • 1 second
  • 0.9 seconds
  • 0.8 seconds
  • 0.7 seconds
  • 0.6 seconds
  • 0.5 seconds
  • 0.4 seconds
  • 0.3 seconds
  • 0.2 seconds

The default value is 530, so based on what the GUI shows us you'll need to manually edit the key to get that magic number back.