Hi Mel,
Are they using windows XP?
Do they have anti virus software installed and using it?
If not I suggest an Internet Suite type of anti virus - most of them protect against viruses, spam, trojans, etc.

here's a thread where we talked about them-
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...ad.php?t=26151

Is their machine set for automatic updates from Microsoft?
They may have accidentally opened a spam or virus email.
Do they get many spam type messages?

for now I would suggest running the clean up and the defrag programs to clear out some of the excess junk.
to see if that helps at all.
then install a trial of one of the anti virus programs listed in the other link.

and once the machine is working better they can ask for the pictures to be sent as a jpeg instead of a zip??
usually though a double click on a zip file should open it or open the unzip feature.