IT’S RAINING MALADIES!

With the pouring rain comes a slew of ailments. AT tells you how to keep them at bay

    Even though there are lots of fans of the romantic season of monsoon, there’s no denying that diseases can rain on your parade. 
COMMON DISEASES 
Some of the most serious seasonal maladies include l e p t o s p i ro s i s, malaria, dengue, gastroenteritis, typhoid, viral fever, jaundice and viral conjunctivitis. Physician Dr Jyoti Parekh says, “Monsoon diseases occur mostly due to frequent changes in temperature and excessive humidity, which helps bacteria multiply fast.” 
    Statistics say around 76,755 people contracted malaria in the monsoon in 2010 as opposed to 44,035 in 2009 — a staggering rise of over 70 per cent. This year, there has been a marked rise in dengue cases, say doctors. Apart from this, monsoon also brings with it viral fever, cold cough and flu, states Dr Parekh. 
CAUSES Monsoon is the season of waterborne diseases. Both malaria and dengue are caused by mosquito bites and mosquitoes breed in stagnant water. When drinking water gets c o n t a m i n at e d with sewage water, it leads to diseases like gastroenteritis, jaundice and typhoid. And leptospirosis happens when drinking water gets contaminated with rat urine. 
DOCTOR’S 
ADVICE 
    A regular check-up is important. 
    Do not ignore fever, because if left undiagnosed platelet count drops drastically. 
    Both gastroenteritis and jaundice are caused because of consumption of unhygienic food and water, so always drink filtered, boiled or bottled water to prevent infections. 
    The use of mosquito repellents prevents mosquito bites and also protects you from dengue. 
    Flies carry germs from fruits and foods that are kept open, so avoid eating raw, uncooked food to prevent stomach upsets. 
    Sweets made of milk and paneer spoil easily. Avoid eating them if they are not fresh. 
    Wash feet thoroughly and dry properly to avoid infections. 
    Any cut or wound can become septic easily, so clean and cover a wound with antiseptic and keep it dry.

Adjust Graphics for Speed

Windows XP has a lot of new cool looking visual elements, however, those new elements take up more RAM and cause your computer to be less responsive. By tweaking your graphics settings, you can increase the performance of your computer.
To get started, Let's reduce the color quality.  This setting determines how many colors are displayed on your screen. 

1. Right click on your desktop and select properties.
2. Click on the settings tab and adjust the color quality drop down box to Medium (16 Bit).
3. Click OK.

Next, let's use the windows performance settings to optimize your computer for performance.  This will revert back to the old Windows 2000 look as well as take away a lot of the fancy graphics effects.  However, if you are really into performance, this is the price you have to pay.

1. Right click on the My Computer icon on your desktop or in your start panel and select properties.
2. Next, Click on the Advanced tab and hit the setting button under performance.
3. On the visual effects tab, select Adjust for Best Performance and hit OK.
4. Hit OK once more to exit system properties.

Now your computer will run slightly faster!

How to speed up internet in Windows XP

Introduction
Tired of slow internet speed? Well, the problem might not be in the service provider or the hardware but the operating system itself. If you are using Microsoft Windows than you should know that Windows operates on various network and hardware configurations. Due to this, it is sometimes difficult to properly configure it for maximum performance.
 
The speed of your internet connection does not depend only on your service provider or hardware but also depends on your operating system. Majority of the users worldwide use Microsoft Windows. Due to this Windows has a wide base of users and due to this Windows XP uses the “one for all approach“. But we know that each users network connection is different as there are various factors affecting each connection:-
1)   Speed
2)   Type
3)   Distance from local network stations
4)   Latency period
 
Thus we can see that every user has a unique network connection.
 
Here we will discuss how to improve the speed of computers which have shared computers
 
Why does your computer slow down?
If your computer slows down when you are using LAN, then the main reason for this is that when you connect to other computers the Windows Explorer automatically starts looking for scheduled tasks on other computers. Due to this the computers slows down as your computer is waiting for a response from other computers.
 
Firstly you must create a system restore point so that if anything goes wrong you have a backup.
 
Solution
 
If you think that this is a complex problem, you are right but the solution to this problem is not that complex. Here, we will just disable the particular feature of Windows Explorer which starts looking for scheduled tasks on other computers.
 
This can be done by accessing the System Registry and removing the reference key. Due to this, the feature will not be loaded. For editing the system registry, you are supposed to follow the given steps:-
 
1)   Open the Start Menu and Select Run. Now type regeditin the text box. ( This will open the Registry Editor )                                                                                       
2)   When the Registry Editor has opened you will see that it has 2 panes. Expand the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINEfrom the left pane.
3)   From the expanded menu, expand SOFTWARE, thenMICROSOFT and from that expand Windows.
4)   Locate Current Version and expand it. From that expand Explorer and further expandRemoteComputer from it.
5)   Now expand NameSpace. Here you will find 2 entries. One is “{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}” and other is “{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}”. The first one is used to see shared printers and the second one is used to see remote scheduling tasks.
6)   You should delete the second one -  “{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}”  by right – clicking on it and selecting delete from the drop – down menu.
7)   If you do not want to view shared printers now or in future than you can also delete this key but only if you will not share printers now or in future.
8)   Restart the computer and enjoy yourself.