phpED installed fine and Add An Existing Project worked just fine to download the current files from CVS on the server to my local Windows box. When I try to edit, update, or just about anything else with a file, the dialogue window opens and says "waiting cvs..." forever and ever. Have already spent hours searching through the help file and could not find help. Any suggestions?

Try to add -q option (quite) to the commands.
If it does not help, take the commad that was run in the log window and try to run it manually and let me know if cvs asks for any input.