IE Stops Working After 7-8 Minutes - VPN Related

Hi, I have a very specific problem. I searched around and other fixes for this issue didn't seem to work.

I have a 5 year old HP custom laptop. Windows XP Pro SP3, 1GigRAM, Fire GL Card (128? MB), Pentium 4 around 2Ghz.

The issue is, I can connect to my home network fine. Everything works until about 7-10 minutes go by. The IE stops working in the sense I cannot browse anymore. Firefox as well, I am still connected, MSN works, Skype, Radio, you name it just not IE.

Now here is where the issue become unique. If I connect to the VPN at work via cisco systems VPN BEFORE the 7-10minutes and stay on through those few minutes (its like there is a trigger) then I am fine until I reboot.

I have a wireless card and a network card. In my adapters I have a CISCO Systems adapter too which is disabled until I go to log onto my VPN, then it enables while I'm logged onto the VPN (disables when I log off VPN again).

In safemode with networking it never bums out, IE worked for 40 minutes without connecting to VPN. I did a full scan with Panda 09 retail, checked the hijackthis log and looked fine, all the tasks look fine while in a normal boot. I can't figure it out!

Any ideas?

Is there some issue with maybe the networking adapters priority settings / does that even exist?

Thanks for taking the time to read!
Robb