Blinking Vista "hourglass" whenever Windows Media Player is open

When I have Windows Media Player v.11 open, my cursor blinks rapidly back and
forth between arrow pointer and the rotating circle "Vista Hourglass"- this
is very irritating. It's very distrating to use a cursor that is very
rapidly "stuttering" or "flashing" back and forth between the rotating circle
"Vista Hourglass" and the arrow. Windows Media Player shows only 1% or so
CPU usage; It stops when I close Windows Media Player. But I should be able
to have Windows Meida Player open and idle without having this annoying
super-fast blinking cursor-rotating circle "Vista Hourglass" thing.


I have a fast machine, 5.9 in all Windows User Experience categories. Vista
64-bit, 8 GB RAM, 4 GHz dual-core CPU, etc etc. Vista Ultimate, SP2,
completely patched to latest level, latest WHQL video drivers from Nvidia,
latest WHQL drivers for all hardware. I have no additional codecs or plugins
installed in Windows Media Player.

I have checked all the settings in Windows Media player to try to find if it
is indexing or doing some other useless background activity that I can turn
off, and I can't find anything.

Any suggestions?