I don't know much about ports, so excuse my ignorance on the subject. All I know, is that they are used to communicate.

I recently installed a home network, and since then, funny things have been happening... first, WinMX refuses to connect to anything, then I can't access my Hotmail inbox any way other than Outlook Express. Before then, I had wierd printer error messages along the lines of 'You can't print! deal with it!' even though I could print fine, but ever since these occurences, these error messages have gone away... any ideas?

A friend told me my ports are screwey, but I don't know what he means... a little educating link would also be appreciated =)

Strange. Did you uninstall or update anything?. If you did you fixed it.
If you didn't then someone remotely is playing with you, by hacking in and displaying messages, creating errors, and ect.

EsysteNet