most likely it's either a DirectX or driver issue, or a combination of both. Don't experience it at all on my Asus laptop running Win8--settings are locked to 32 bit color and full acceleration (NV GTX670MX, running Asus latest 311.00 drivers, stock mouse and sound drivers), so I can't force it to happen on that system.

It also runs just fine on my old XP Pro SP3 box as well (ATI 5870, drivers from around Nov. 2012 I think, Asus Xonar DX Sound with their last stable XP drivers, and a Logitech cordless Trackman Trackball mouse with their last XP driver package). I can however force it on my XP box by notching back DirectX 9 Acceleration one notch--which essentially just disables Hardware Cursor.

Barring some funky method SE may be using for rendering the cursor in a not-so-generic way that is causing it to notget along with all drivers, perhaps it is more of a Microsoft or specific group of vendors that need to address the issue. Getting a third party into the mix can really bog things down.. especially with how tight SE is with their IP assets.