How To Limit Your Children's Access Times On A Computer

How to regulate your children's access times on a computer

If you want to regulate your children's' access times on their computer when you can't personally supervise them Windows XP provides a tool to do this.

To access this tool you must log on with an administrator account.

After you log on, use the Windows Command Prompt.

Click Start/ Programs/Accessories/Command Prompt.

At the Command Prompt type the following:

net user AccountName /times:

Replace "AccountName" with your child's Windows account name.

Finish by adding specific times to the end of the command as shown below.

These will be the times during which your child can log onto Windows as normal.

Any time not included is restricted.

You can specify a day or days along with a time range.

For example, use the following to allow computer use only on Saturdays between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.:

net user AccountName /times:Sa,9AM-5PM

You can also specify a range of days.

For example, use the following to allow computer use Monday through Friday from 4p.m. to 10 p.m.:

net user AccountName /times:M-F,4PM-10PM

You can even set different schedules together.

For example, use the following to allow computer use Monday through Friday from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. and on Saturdays between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.:

net user AccountName /times:M-F,4PM-10PM;Sa,9AM-5PM

To indicate days of the week use the abbreviations M, T, W, Th, F, Sa and Su.

To indicate times, use only whole hours.

If you use multiple schedules separate each with a semicolon as in the above example.

To remove the restrictions you set use the following command:

net user AccountName /times:ALL


In combination with the above, you can use a filtering program which prevents children from accessing inappropriate web pages (or any specific pages you want to restrict).