Once again, thanks for all the advise. I'm still running Win98SE, so some specifics might not apply, but most of the ideas sure do!

Last night I finished reinstalling upgrades to my reinstalled OS on my freshly formated HD. Lo and behold, no more mouse trail!!!!! Among several other things I installed Media Player 9 (I think 10 requires XP) and upgraded the codecs - all suggested solutions.

You guys were right on target, thanks for helping me get smarter. Now I can move on from figuring out how to get Windows to work better to figuring out just where I want to position my cavalry and flaming pigs.