StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I am on Rogers Hi-speed Internet up here in Ottawa. I run a D-Link Router off the cable modem so that I can share it with another computer in the house. All of a sudden sometime between the time I went to bed Tuesday night and the time I got up Wednesday morning it stopped working. All attempts to restart the modem and router failed to restore the connection. For the purpose of getting the Internet working again I skipped the router and plugged my computer directly into the modem. I called Rogers Tech Support and they said that there was no problem, they could ping the modem fine, they also confirmed that there was no DHCP problem. They sent a tech out today, he could connect fine to the modem with his computer. I have taken my computer to my friend's across the street and had no trouble connecting there. After confirming that the modem works just fine the tech mentioned that he has experienced machines that act in a similar manner while using Windows XP, which I use, and to try the USB port on the modem. I tried that and lo and behold it works. This is a problem for me because I need to share this internet with somebody and because I only have 1 USB port on my computer which I use for my printer and occasionally camera and MP3 player. I'm just wondering if anyone has heard of this problem before and knows of a way to fix it. I would like to hold doing a format as a last resort and I don't need posts saying to switch to a better OS.