Yes, Vista has "System Restore".
As for the rest... more questions than answers.
E.g. Vista is very good at protecting itself from 'careless' users. So assuming he was using his daughter's login without admin privileges, how could he have "changed the settings"?
Thanks, Vladimyr! I kinda figured it'd probably be a bit too little Info, but all I could do was copy & paste what she posted. If they haven't done so already, I'm going to steer them towards trying the System Restore. I already mentioned it to them last night. But, I'll stress it more.
I also told my friend that it was quite possible that just as her Son-in-Law is alleging / accusing, it quite possibly WAS AOL taking over the system too much and changing something. You see ... as I understand it, that malfunctioning computer doesn't normally have AOL. My friend just went to visit her daughter and I guess took the liberty of temporarily installing AOL. And now they have computer problems ... as well as FAMILY problems because of that.