I can tell several stories of trying to set things up for my parents, only to have to call them/wait until I fly home next to fix something. Lessons have been learned the hard way on dumb email chains/anti-virus software, but trying to give them a list of browser settings (among other things) to do is getting to be too much.
So, now what?
We're at an impasse now too where my mom wants a new laptop. She doesn't want to learn anything new (Mac OS) and both she and I don't want to deal with Windows 8+. I'm skeptical about just installing Windows 7 on a newer laptop (...driver/hardware support).
If I could get her to switch to Mac (she's in her 70s), I could set her up with a non-admin user account and set it up easily so that I can securely do remote support. The funny thing is that she would probably do it if not for my brother, who does support for a living and doesn't want to learn to fix Macs...smh
And something like TeamViewer does the remote support nicely.
I'm all for Linux otherwise, but in this use case I'd let old people use whatever keeps them going.
She always makes a mess of Windows machines. If her first instinct weren't always to call my older brother for help, I'd have gotten her the Mac ages ago.
I worked full time for 5 of the last 6 years on Windows malware research. Windows is a swiss-cheese joke of an operating system that won't progress because of a(n at this point pathological) need for 20 years of backwards compatibility. Microsoft: make use of that XP mode VM and extend that trend forwards, you fools.
Another option would be to put her regular use to a VM that you control (remotely) and can restore to a clean state at any time...
I'd like to get everything he needs installed and lock out modifications. Needs cookies obviously, but not much else.
Somehow he manages to have video player issues in every single browser that I can't figure out. He has to watch youtube in chrome, live streams in firefox, etc. It's really dumb. Buying him a chromecast improved it some, though, by avoiding it.
(Myself, I find that model complex and unintuitive, being used to the Unix way, but everything has its learning curve.)
Or, introduce them to more stable OSses, like Ubuntu instead of Windows. That worked for my neighbours ;-)
Remote maintenance is probably something I should look more into.
Though I admit I am starting to worry about the program itself as it's now warning about "missing antivirus" and such, but it's not gone over the deep end just yet.
For maintaining your mother-in-law's computer it's perfect.