Comment two hard drives (Score 1) 418
I empathize; I have an uncle who's about 100 miles away. So this is an old XP machine? Buy a removable hard drive tray system with two trays and a 2nd hard drive. Ghost or CloneZilla her current hard drive to the new one. Give her a short tutorial on turning the key in the lock and swapping the hard drive. Provide her with a padded box to put the hard drive tray into. When she mucks it up again, have her swap hard drives and then ship you the mucked up one. Fix at your leisure, send back. Repeat the process for the rest of her life...