I finally have my custom cursor up and running, and it looks great... in windowed mode that is. Fullscreen mode, however, is another story. Every time I stop moving the mouse, my cursor disapears. My game loop looks something like this (psuedo-ish code):

get_input();
test_input(); //exit if anything was clicked, etc

clear_screen(); //if I don't do this, the cursor remains visable..

device->SetCursor(x, y); // xy come from retrieved input, works
device->ShowCursor(TRUE); // draw it..

device->Present(NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL); // display it

I've tried playing with the presentation intervals and refresh rates, but they don't seem to be the issue (though I could be completely wrong). I've left my current settings at 60Hz (same as for my desktop, higher ones mess up the display), and IMMEDIATE or DEFAULT presentation intervals (neither seems to work any better or worse than the other). And the mouse at immediate update because it's the only option. Edit: The cursor also seems to remain much more visible when it's at the absolute edges (any of them) of the screen. It still looks inconsistant / flashes in and out, but it doesn't disapear entirely as it does in the center of the screen. Thanks for any help and let me know if there is any more information I could post to help figure out the problem!