upon starting the desktop, the cursor is an ugly square

[Pat Kane]

  Robert P. J. Day wrote:
  > the problem still occurs occasionally, even after i've been logged
  > in for a while.  suddenly, for no reason, the cursor will turn into a
  > square,

I have a similar problem (see Bug 493772).
On my F11b system, with i915 onboard graphics, the cursor
is never visible.  It made a graphics install a bit tricky but
most of the install dialogs can be navigated with the TAB key.

I see this message in my dmesg output:
   [ INFO: possible circular locking dependency detected ]
    2.6.29-21.fc11.i686.PAE #1
    -------------------------------------------------------
   Xorg/2230 is trying to acquire lock:
    (&mm->mmap_sem){----}, at: [<c0499d3a>] might_fault+0x48/0x85

   but task is already holding lock:
   ( &dev->struct_mutex){--..}, at: [<f82ca99a>] i915_gem_execbuffer+0xd6/0xa0b
   [i915]