I was going back and forth with developer Kristopher Borg of Quixel and I finally was able to figure out why I could not see the 3d preview cube when Ndo2 was open. I hope this solution will help others as well.
Solution was that my windows Aero was not enabled
The reason being is because couple months back I had installed log me in (mirror display adaptor)
I uninstalled logmein but didnt realize it kept the mirror driver in the display adaptor.
So I went to device manager>display adaptors>log me in mirror driver> right click uninstall
Restarted PC and now the cube works perfectly, lighting work, updates right away, and I can select other meshes.
:poly142: