It's hard for gentle pushing from software design to overcome years of learned helplessness.
I think more than anything there just hasn't been a good enough effort to help people get up the first part of the learning curve as they often have no idea where to start and people haven't been taught how to protect themselves, etc.
I agree with the earlier post that software designers have to want to make things simple, but people have to want to learn how to use it.
There was no sense of play and the fear of "Blowing something up" was always there and I wondered how anybody could learn with that kind of fear.
I can understand getting frustrated but fear of the machine was baffling but I got a good glimpse on how "regular" people reacted to technology.
People want stable machines that never break no matter what they do. Once we actually get to that point, maybe people will stop being so afraid but we aren't there, their fear comes from experience of things breaking on them.
I think I conditioned everyone in my family to be more afraid of letting me near electronic equipment with a screwdriver than the equipment itself.
{edit} On the other hand, you also have people that constantly break things as a result of their own actions, and refuse to change. My friend's sister would be constantly corrupting her external hard drive because she would just yank the plug to remove her laptop from her desk. My friend would fix things and repeatedly tell her not to do that, but it would always happen again.
People are all over the spectrum. There are people that are just downright afraid of new things, and there are people that just take everything for granted (not caring what the consequences of their actions are).
In the short term, your friend should tell her that she won't fix it anymore (or should have, whatever).
In the long term, thats a design problem. Not that I know how to fix it, but the idea that you can't just disconnect is something that needs teaching. If we can find a way that people can disconnect hardware (e.g. USB drives) that would be a good thing.
However, I understand the fear of the machine though. Most people are fearful when they first begin to drive, first begin to use power tools or begin to fire weapons in uncontrolled, unsupervised scenarios.
Computers, assuming you're simply using the machine and not trying to stick objects into the power supply, don't. It's ridiculous the fear some people have of simply using a computer.
I remember a line from some short-lived sitcom Tony Danza once starred in. Speaking to his new computer, he says, "You look like a TV, but you're not a TV. You're an evil TV." There's an anxiety and apprehension with computers that, IMO, exceeds the bounds of rationality.
I could be entirely wrong though. I think it is very difficult for those of us that understand technology to understand how those people must feel about things. It is for me at least.