At the same moment I got the game started it sounded like I had a bird in my case (not cage

). I had the exact same problem when I tried the demo.
Patching to version 1.1 didn't solve the problem, so I started looking around in the options and just for fun checked the Hardware mouse cursor and immediately the bird had gone, at the same second I remove the check in the box the bird is back!
My system:
WinXP Pro SP2
Mainboard: Asus A7V8X-X
CPU: Athlon XP 2800+ (Barton)
RAM: 1GB
Graphics card: MSI GF 6800GT 256MB (AGP)
Sound: Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS
Latest updates and drivers for everything.
My guess is some code in the game somehow interferes with the graphics card in some way, either through DirectX or the firmware (how ever THAT is possible?