Text select (I-beam) cursor is white in text areas (disappears)

I have a new Inspiron XPS with ATI Radeon 9700 graphics board.

Whenever the cursor changes to an I-beam (i.e. when mousing over ANY text area), the cursor changes to white and effectively disappears. If I click within an editable area (usually, I cannot even tell where I am positioned), the cursor changes back to black for typing.

This happens in ALL applications: Word, FrontPage, Notepad, and even while editing this message in Internet Explorer!

I have searched the Dell community boards and cannot find any reference to this problem. I just love the WUXGA screen and screaming CPU, I cannot keep this PC under these conditions. To locate my cursor, I must roll it into the boarders or scroll bars and then carefully coordinate my movement inwards. It's absurd!