Far flung Vista

Checking email this morning this was an interesting cry for help from a Vista user. It seems that he install of Vista had managed to hide all her desktop icons and then store them inside a series of recursive folders. Nothing the user has
done seem to prompt this action and it seems that Vista had just decided to difficult. It was sorted out - after a fashion - in due course but frankly should not have happened. Someone said that if Vista was a car it would stop working for no reason whatsoever and the only way to make it work again would be to replace the engine and suspension! Googling for the solution to the lady's problem I was alarmed to see advice like

Use REGEDIT to view HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell, click on Bags and select Edit > Delete > Yes. Delete the BagMRU key as well, and restart

Letting the inexperienced loose on the registry is a sure fire way to get the "it just stopped working" email or phone call pdq! What amazed me was the way that the mess was accepted by the user as one of those things and when I suggested a move to a more stable OS, practically any of them really, the note of surprise in the user voice at this suggestion clearly suggested I was in dodgy territory. A downgrade to XP or 2000 made not sense since Vista was the latest version and therefore the best and the idea of a move to Linux or OSX dismissed since they would not support the programs the person needed. ho-hum...!