[rwhitman]

My mom has had various Windows PCs since the late 90's. About every 3 to 6 months or so I get a call that it's "stopped working" and has either locked up completely or is moving at a crawl.

Nearly every time it takes me hours if not days to do a bunch of scans, install updates and purge whatever garbage has been installed by various malware that she's somehow managed to find. I've done more than a few clean wipes, bought her new machines and yet still she figures out how to kill it again. Most of the time it's caused by her playing some silly online puzzle game, or clicking a link in an email or some sort of fake notification... or AOL, which she refuses to ditch even though it's a huge vector.

It's been decades and she still hasn't learned how to avoid this stuff correctly. I've tried every malware scanner & notification software on the market, and each one of them is eventually bypassed by clever malware or in some cases like AVG or Norton, BECOMES the friggin problem.

Basically, my conclusion is if your parent has a problem like this the only solution is refuse to help them anymore if they insist on using Windows as their primary web device and make them get a Mac and/or an iPad, maybe a Chromebook as others suggested. Then get rid of the Windows PC or simply tell them not to use it for anything other than printing / scanning etc. There is no winning otherwise. Windows for some folks is just plain bad news

[daddykotex]

I'm genuinely not sure this is a Windows problem. They might get infected on pretty much any OS if they navigate anywhere without precautions (as most parents do, including mine).

I'd like to see if a something like DeepFreeze could help here (there are probably alternatives here, DeepFreeze just came first in my mind).

[chadgeidel]

It's absolutely not a Windows problem, my dad managed to click through some "malware" (i didn't see it, but i'm thinking it was a cleverly crafted web page) and give his credit card to someone... on his iPad.

[ben_jones]

You should try to automate that? Maybe auto-backup anything important and just have the ability to re-image remotely?

[fredgrott]

or if they use MS Windows make them switch browsers to Google's Chrome

[rwhitman]

OMG, that's what I thought too! But no, no, no. Chrome became her BIGGEST vector for malware! She was installing Chrome plugins, and they in turn installed a modded copy of Chromium with all kinds of toolbars and spyware, which set itself as the default. Chrome became a total disaster, worse than IE ever was. I think recent security patches have helped a bit though

[i336_]

Wow. This kind of thing is not particularly easy to google for - know anywhere I might be able to find out more about this?

[techload]

I see this all the time with client's computers that I must clean.

[i336_]

Huh.

I never really thought of the practical ramifications of a fully open-source browser...

Although now I'm wondering what API keys they compiled Chromium with. :v