When surfing the web using Internet Explorer, my cursor frequently changes to a hand pointer that has a little yellow burst on the lower right-hand corner with an exclamation mark inside. It only changes for about 10 seconds, and the change is accompanied by a click, but it's not my normal system click. It seems to change when I click a link or sometimes if I hit the back button, but it's inconsistant. I believe I first noticed this when I was on Microsoft's web site. I got a pop-up that asked me if I wanted to take a survey. I clicked yes, and the cursor changed, but no survey page ever came up. If anyone has any idea what is causing this, and more importantly, how I can make it stop, I would appreciate it.

Do you by chance have the google toolbar installed on your IE? If you do, then it's probably the built in popup blocker. That is what the curser does for this toolbar tweak, and it sounds familiar to what you described. hope this helps `Marc