Controlling Kids Logon Hours in XP Pro

News Type: Other — Sun Sep 3, 2006 10:36 AM EDT

technology, kids, xp, logins, windows-xp-pro, logon-hours

Would you like to control when your kids can logon to the computer? There are commercial and shareware programmes that can do this with a fancy GUI, but it can also be done with admin rights from the XP command line for free.

In Windows XP Professional go to Start > Run and Type cmd

When the command Window appears enter your requirements in one of the following formats, where NAME is the user logon

net user NAME /time:M-F,08:00-17:00
Limits the user NAME to logon Monday- Friday between 8am and 5pm

net user NAME /time:M-F,8am-5pm
The same thing can also be expressed as above using the 12 hour clock

net user NAME /time:M,9am-5pm;T,1pm-3pm;W-F,8:00-17:00
This shows the easiest way of setting limits that differ on multiple days.

To express Saturday and Sunday use 'Sa' and 'Su'.

net user NAME /time:all
Will remove all restrictions

A null value (blank) means a user can never logon (when grounded for example!). Also note that you can only set one-hour increments - and make sure the user account is limited or a smart kid will just run cmd and alter the restrictions you've set!

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{"commentId":276004,"authorDomain":"igeldard"}

Ian Geldard

This is a fairly simple (but effective) method of access control for kids. It doesn't for example force a logoff after a certain length of time, or at a certain time. Does anyone have any recommendations for freeware or shareware that does?

Ian

{"commentId":276004,"threadId":"40382","contentId":"349311","authorDomain":"igeldard"}

2 votes

#1 - Sun Sep 3, 2006 10:53 AM EDT

{"commentId":277086,"authorDomain":"ooble"}

Ooble

Looks good. I don't have any reason to use it, but it's well-written and I enjoyed it. :-)

One question: how do you differ between Tuesday and Thursday? I'm guessing Tu and Th, but I want to be clear.

{"commentId":277086,"threadId":"40382","contentId":"349311","authorDomain":"ooble"}

1 vote

#2 - Mon Sep 4, 2006 1:18 PM EDT

{"commentId":277304,"authorDomain":"igeldard"}

Ian Geldard

Tuesday = T, Thursday = Th

{"commentId":277304,"threadId":"40382","contentId":"349311","authorDomain":"igeldard"}

1 vote

#3 - Mon Sep 4, 2006 6:25 PM EDT

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IAN GELDARD

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Controlling Kids Logon Hours in XP Pro

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