Debain mouse problem

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Hello,

I installed potato on my laptop and upgraded to woody to get X working.
So now I can startx and I have gnome + sawfish installed.

The problem I am having now is that my mouse is nearly not on screen at 
all.

Someone told me to set the option SWCursor in my xconfig file but its
doesnt seem to take as when I exit x it is still using HWCursor.

The debian irc channel didn't know, perhaps someone here will?

I am using a neomagic card on a sony viao XG29.
The latest release of X.

Ironically this is the same problem I am having with FreeBSD on this
laptop, so I know its a config error.

Anyone have any idea?

I should also mention this is my first time installing debian and it was
painful.

apt is nice though :)

-
Jake