Windows 7 - Cursor disappears in DOW and other games

Hi, i found a post over a year ago that was the same thing.
my cursor disappears when i load DOW and a few other games.
i'm running two monitors and it appears on the other screen (with one monitor i can highlight buttons or links but still see the cursor stuck somewhere, despite my moving the cursor around.
it makes all games affected impossible to play.
i'm using a microsoft, wireless, intellimouse explorer 2.0 and ran the updated windows 7 software to get the extra buttons working (like they did in windows xp).

not sure how to fix this.
i've massaged all the settings, trails on/off, etc.i have a nvidia mother board but no settings to make hte cursor go away.