How do some people do it?

[hobbit709]

Friend brought his wife's computer over last night. Says it won't recognize flash drives and pops up all sorts of Windows Explorer windows.

The reason he won't let her touch HIS laptop is because she is constantly trying to improve something. Her brother is an IT person and so she thinks she knows a lot more than what she does.
She "improved" a 500Gb hard drive to 15Gb, disabled USBSTOR.SYS, and I'm not sure what else yet. she also has a habit of downloading every piece of crapware and toolbar she runs across.
I told him the best bet is to save the data and reinstall XP.
then I'm going to set up a user account with all options disabled and not tell her what the administrative password is.
This is about the 6th time I've had to straighten that computer out.

[sir pball]

1. Does it support virtualization?

Install a barebones Linux (or BSD, probably better for this since we dont' need much in the way of usability), as in even without X if you can do it, and have it start up a virtualized XP on boot. Run it from an R/W image, not a partition, so you can keep a clean copy around. When she inevitably screws shit up, it's a 5-minute job to drop back into Linux and just put the clean XP image back on. I did this for the laptop I shared with my ex; I ran full-blown Ubuntu because I actually used it as a primary but it worked like a charm to fix her "tinkering".

[hobbit709]

2. At this point it would be less hassle to do a clean reinstall

considering i'm going to have to resize and repartition the hard drive. I can do a complete reinstall with all the drivers and apps in about an hour. I had an image copy of her system on the D partition until she wiped that partition and resized the C to 15Gb from 100gb. I'm just going to set her user account so that she can't modify ANY settings or install anything.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

3. If I may be so bold...

...as to suggest a user account which auto runs a batch file consisting of only "@echo off <cr-lf> shutdown -s".

[sir pball]

4. I figured you were going to wipe it

Which is why I suggested going the VM route. The locked-down user account is a great idea in theory...but I've tried it with intransigent idiots and it actually ends up being MORE of a PITA; you WILL be getting incessant calls about "this toolbar doesn't work" and "I can't install this smiley pack" and and and..*tears at hair*

Let her have a sandbox that she can soil all she wants, just make it real easy to scoop and clean.

[Mnpaul]

5. I had one exactly like this

A friend had a girl friend who was a "computer expert". I set him up with a removable hd system with two caddies. I kept an image of the drive and when his computer no longer worked, all he had to was swap drives and bring the other to me to be re-imaged.

[BlueJazz]

6. Since she has a fairly large hard drive ...install XP in 20 partitions and hide the boot files...

...so each time she screws it up you can just make the next partition active..

[hobbit709]

7. UPDATE: She picked it up last night

and promised me she wouldn't mess with any of the settings when she has a problem with a software update-which is what started the whole thing.

[BlueJazz]

8. I'm sure you're a nice person but you don't really believe that , do you ?

(oh ...look...something shiny with coupons..)

[hobbit709]

9. I told her each time I have to fix stupid, the cost will double.