I initially tried giving my mother the “you’re unlikely to break anything” advice as well, then reconsidered after she’d followed that advice and gotten malware on the computer.
“Boot into this live-CD and you’re unlikely to break anything a reboot won’t fix.” (At least as long as you don’t use webmail or similar persistent online accounts that can get hacked by malware you downloaded into RAM during the same session.)
I initially tried giving my mother the “you’re unlikely to break anything” advice as well, then reconsidered after she’d followed that advice and gotten malware on the computer.
“Boot into this live-CD and you’re unlikely to break anything a reboot won’t fix.” (At least as long as you don’t use webmail or similar persistent online accounts that can get hacked by malware you downloaded into RAM during the same session.)