Windows 7: Mouse Pointer Spotlight

I was using Windows 7.  I noticed that, in some online demo videos, people were able to have their mouse cursor highlighted, as if it were a flashlight.  I wanted to be able to do that.  I ran a search to find a freeware option.  I had to filter this search to find sites that seemed to be helpful.  I found there were some shareware options, including PointerFocus, MouseLight, and SpotOnTheMouse.  There were also some freeware options that looked interesting but didn't give me quite what I wanted, including the freeware MouseShade and Sonar.

At some point, I became aware of the obvious, which was that I could probably just tinker with the mouse cursor or maybe install a different kind of cursor, making it visible in the same way that a spotlight effect would.  Built-in options in Windows 7 (Control Panel > Mouse, Pointers tab and Pointer Options tab) included choosing a larger cursor and adding tails.  To expand on that, I ran a search, glanced at a webpage offering a free download of 7500 various kinds of mouse pointers, and then went to a Microsoft webpage explaining how to change the mouse pointer's appearance.  The basic idea here was that, in that same Control Panel > Mouse > Pointers tab, I could click Browse and see a boatload of cursor (.cur) and animation (?) (.ani) files that existed in C:\Windows\Cursors.

My guess was that I could probably do a search for additional .cur files and download them to that folder, and then they would hopefully be visible in that Pointers tab.  The Open Cursor Library looked like it might have a lot of cursor options.  I also looked cursorily at webpages on creating your own cursor, creating a cursor from an image, previewing a cursor, and using a custom cursor file.  But then I realized that -- damn, being a curser and all -- I had to get back to work.