The parental control feature is something that has given a complete new function to your system running on either of Windows 7 or Windows Vista. You can set the parental control feature and get a lot of benefits out of it controlling the use of computer by your children. You need to have a administrator account to make all the parental control effective and use them. This is because you will need to make the alteration in the user accounts and manage them on the overall. You also need to have a password for the administrator account to make sure that your accounts are safe. The limitation is that you cannot use the feature on a computer that has joined a domain.
Functions of Parental Controls:
The first function that parental control feature gives you is a control over your children’s activity on the computer. It monitors the number of hours that are spent by your child on the computer doing what exactly. You can use the parental control to set limits for playing games on the computer. You can even set a list of safe programs and safe games that you would allow your children to play.
Apart from these simple controls, you can also use the parental controls to make sure that your children are doing the right stuff on the computer. You can use the web filter as well as activity reporting in order to analyze the activities of your kid on the computer. This gives parental control an excellent function helping you make sure that your child is directed the right way while on the computer.
Turning Parental control on:
You need to have a password protected administrator account to use the parental control settings and set the feature up on your computer. Create a standard user account on your computer through the User Accounts section and follow the instructions below to use the parental controls:
- Click on the Start Menu and then Control Panel. Click on User Accounts and Family Safety on the Control Panel. You will be required to enter your administrator password in this case for your protection and safety.
- Click on the account that you want to use Parental Controls for. You can even use the Create a new user account feature to make a new account.
- When Parental Controls blocks access to a game or program, a notification is displayed that the program has been blocked. Your child can click a link in the notification to request permission for access to that game or program. You can allow access by entering your account information.
- You can then move on to setting your parental control in detail to monitor the activity. The following features are available that you can use for your children and maintain their computer experience:
- Time limits: You can force time limits in which you children can log on the computer. This would force them log on the computer and use it in the hours when its not the time to study or any other activity. The time limit feature is a flexible one letting you set different hours for different days making sure that they have some extra time on the weekends.
- Games: You can chose the games you children are allowed to play and the ones that they are not allowed to play. You can even allow them to play any game above a certain rating. In addition, you can opt to allow or block the games that do not have any rating just to make sure that the games your child plays on the computer are safe as well as friendly for him. This will also reduce the chance of any virus affected application in form of a program execute on your system and effect the performance of you computer setting you in trouble.
- You can even opt to allow or block a specific program on your computer just to make sure that your computer is safe even after your kids have quality experience with the computer.
