Mouse Cursor Freezes Every Few Minutes

Hey guys,

I got a problem I've been experiencing lately. I'm not sure what set it off. It's a new computer, specs are:

Gigabyte P35-DS3R Mobo
Intel Q6600
XFX 8800GT
WD 7200RPM 500GB HD

Basically, no matter what I'm doing, every few minutes my mouse cursor will freeze and I can't move the mouse for 1-3 seconds. It doesn't matter if I'm on Internet Explorer, playing StarCraft, or playing Crysis. If I'm not playing a game, (i.e. browsing windows or internet) when the mouse freezes I can often see the little Vista "busy" circle (formerly hourglass) next to the cursor, so I'm pretty sure it's not related to the mouse itself, rather something else going on in the background. I haven't installed much lately other than Office XP, but I've shutoff the startup entry under msconfig.

Also yesterday, I tried to install the nVidia 168.09 beta drivers for the 64-bit Vista, and it failed miserably. I lost picture, so I had to reboot to safe mode and rollback to 169.02. That being said, I think I was experiencing the problem even before the driver change.

If anyone has any insight, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.