Built in parental control in Windows XP – control the time users can login to your computer
Parental Control is one thing that parents in our part don’t know about but parents in the West cry for. A good Parental Control software is essential for any home PC. But till Vista, no version of Windows had any sort of parental control. To set up a parental control we need to use multiple utilities available in XP together.
The most important part is the user access time restriction. Although you can’t control the total time a user logs in, you can set time limits and make XP shutdown automatically at a particular time. You can also restrict the time a user is allowed to log in.
The option is available through the Command Prompt by net user command. The net command is one among the most powerful and useful commands available in Windows XP command prompt. It allows an Administrator to do and automate many system administrative task. Here is an example where a user named : Others with password : Ajith is restricted to log in during 12PM to 1PM on my PC
net user Others ajith /times:Su-Sa,3-15;Sa,9-12;net user Others ajith /times:all
To clear all restrictions just type : net user [account name] [Password/*] /times:all
What will happen if the user tries to login during the hours other than specified in the command. Well the user will be given a wrong password error. When I tried to run a program as the restricted user after loging in to Administrator the following error message was shown :
Error shown during restricted hours.
This is a brief summary about the net user commands on Microsoft Knowledge Base :
Net user
Adds or modifies user accounts or displays user account information.
Syntax
net user [UserName [Password | *] [options]] [/domain]
net user [UserName {Password | *} /add [options] [/domain]]
net user [UserName [/delete] [/domain]]
Parameters
UserName : Specifies the name of the user account to add, delete, modify, or view. The name of the user account can have as many as 20 characters.
Password : Assigns or changes a password for the user’s account. Type an asterisk (*) to produce a prompt for the password. The password is not displayed when you type it at the password prompt.
/domain : Performs the operation on the domain controller in the computer’s primary domain.
options : Specifies a command-line option. The following table lists valid command-line options that you can use.
Microsoft KB : Full options of net user command. You can Add/ Remove a user account, control all the aspects of an account and time restrict user log in using the net user command.
The times can be specified in increments of 1 hour. If you need to specify multiple times for different days you can use” /time:” option many times. The nest step would be to automatically shutdown the computer when the allowed time is over. This will be explained in the next post.
Related posts : (sorted by relevence)
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Comments
Sound great however:
1, What happens if you don’t know the password of the user A/C your trying to control. Can you still control the A/C without it?
2, What happens if you initially know the password, however, the user your trying to control changes their password? Can they now get in?
Hi Reidsi,
Answers :
1, Yes, you can reset the user password using the method mentioned here – http://www.exnol.com/windows/globally-control-and-change-all-users-passwords-in-windows ,
2, If you have changed the users allowed time and after that the user changes their password, it would not affect the control. The time control will still be enabled.
I think that would have cleared your doubts. If you have any more doubts please feel free to contact me or comment me.Thank you for you interest
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What happens if they are logged on during the allowed hours, but they stay logged on past the ending hour? Will the pc log them off or shut down? what happens?
I want my kid to use the Internet for not more than 30 to 40 minutes a day.
Can this command, in some modified form, be used to only restrict the time Internet is used instead of restricting the long-on time of the whole computer. I have windows xp home on my pc.
Hi Mike,
thanks for your comment…
I am currently testing the condition you specified.. please wait for a day.. I will reply soon
Hi Alok..
We can implement this in a different way actually. Please tell me which mode of Internet access you use – using dialup or LAN
Alok it is much easier to allow your an account to use net continuously for 30 or 40 minutes. It is very hard to set an account to have internet access for a total of 40 minutes in different slots. I will post about how to do the former.. this week
Ajith I will be very happy with the easier option! i.e a continuous slot of 30 minutes starting at a particular time on weekdays (and, if possible, a 45 minute slot at a different starting time on saturdays and sundays.)
What happens if the user figures out they just change the system time to fit into the allowed time schedule?
I suppose XP home can’t do user level rights to prevent them changing the system time…
Is this better than the free-for-home-use k9webprotection solutions?
Hi,
There was a question about what happens if they are logged on during the allowed hours, but they stay logged on past the ending hour? Will the pc log them off or shut down? what happens?
Any observations on that?
Thanks!
I’m very interested in this question as well. For me, it’s useless unless it will log them off when the time is up. Or, is there any shareware out there that does the same thing?
K9webprotection is a hundred times better than the default XP one. But it can only control internet access
Hi, if the user stays logged in past the time set they are not logged out. However, I have a scheduled task for my computer to hibernate at a certain time each day. Check http://www.wcgwiki.org/en/general/hibernate.cfm . For scheduled shutdown instead check http://www.coderetard.com/2008/06/18/automatic-windows-shutdown-with-scheduled-tasks/ . No installs, just simple instructions to make Windows do what you want. I have not looked into making it user specific so it does it for all users on the computer. However, this site controls log ins and the others control logging out.
Hi erick..
When I was on blogger last year I had done a post on scheduled tasks as well as on shutdowns.. but I was not able to repost it here. I will soon repost it…
Thank you very much for your interest..
This is a very interesting article. I am also looking for ways to setup an eee pc (XP) for my son. We mostly use Macs and would love to have similar functions that parental control on Mac has. So with time limits, I would love to hear how the PC can automatically log off the user when the time is up. Can’t wait for the development in this thread!
How pathetic the Windows operating system is. Using a command prompt to set parental controls – boy that’s intuitive, easy and convenient – not. This should be an easy to use control panel like on the Mac, not a buried command prompt that nobody can find or use.
This is a great How-To and one that I bet a lot of people have wondered about!