I have just had a third computer with a hard drive problem. The first PC also seemed to have a bad CMOS battery. It is an HP XP PC with two HDs; one crashed, the other lost most of its files. The second is a Compaq 98 PC - seems to have been only a battery problem, because it is not having boot problems now. The third is a Clone 98. It does not seem to have a battery problem, but the HD will not boot, and when I boot from a floppy I get an error that the HD has no FAT or FAT32 partition.

Is this all just bad timing (like the month three of our old monitors went out at the same time), or does anyone know of a virus, worm, etc. that could be involved? We have a firewall - Netopia R5300 router with built in firewall. Verio supposedly configured it before sending it to us, but I have not yet figured out how to block ports.

SO... my two questions:
1. Is there something going on (is paranoia justified - is someone really out to get someone)
2. How do I block ports on my router