Extra mouse pointer

[Brandon Kuczenski <brandon 301south net>]

I am running Gnome 2.6.1 (distro-provided) on Debian-testing with a 2.6.8
kernel.  The hardware is an IBM T23 laptop. When I login into gnome, I get
an extra mouse pointer that appears in the center of the screen just as
the Debian splash screen is showing applications loading.  The extra
pointer sticks around even after the 'real' pointer shows up.  The extra
pointer is always-on-top and it follows the desktop focus if I switch
desktops.

Sometimes it will vanish, but it most often reappears whenever some kind
of redisplay happens -- like when xscreensaver starts or (most
frustratingly) when I start a movie (using ogle DVD player).  When it
reappears, it appears at the current position of the 'real' mouse pointer,
and it has a shape that corresponds to the 'real' mouse pointer's context
-- e.g.  if the mouse happens to be over the edge of a window, the extra
pointer will look like a window-resize pointer.

I first suspected an X problem, but the problem doesn't occur in KDE.
Rather, sometimes in KDE I see an extra pointer appear for an instant, but
it never lasts longer than an instant.  Also, the problem doesn't occur
[in gnome] when I am logged in as root.

I created a test user with default settings, and she had the problem as
well.

I don't know much about X and the various display managers [yet], so I'm
afraid I can't ask a more specific question than, "why does this happen?"
It's really annoying to watch a movie with a big white hand in the middle
of the screen.

I can post screenshots and configuration files upon request.

TIA,
-Brandon