> Perhaps I've missed it - what version of Java are you running on the
> CLIENT where you are trying to start NMC?  I ask, because as far as
> I know, the NMC for 7.6 does not work with JAVA 7, only JAVA 6.
 
 1.6.37. However, it works fine with 1.7.13, too.

$ ls -l `which javaws`
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 Feb  1 21:04 /usr/bin/javaws -> 
/usr/java/default/bin/javaws
$ ls -l /usr/java/default
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Feb  1 21:04 /usr/java/default -> /usr/java/latest/
$ ls -l /usr/java/latest
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Feb  4 14:19 /usr/java/latest -> 
/usr/java/jre1.7.0_13/