I thought of the firewall issue... The one built into XP is not enabled, and there are no third party ones running or installed. I did remove 72 items of spyware but it had no effect. It does have McAffee security center but only the anti-virus installed. I have booted with it disabled with no resolution to the problem.

Looking at Cisco's site, the login popup is using Javascript. So I just went to java.com... only half the buttons work... and of course the get java button is one that does not. I downloaded the installer on my desktop, and copied it over to update the java on the machine. Still no luck after a reboot.