We received a problem from one of our reader who wants to restrict logon hours in windows xp, on his son user account as his son keeps playing games on the computer all the time.

Playing games is always fun for children but this could be a great problem if it impacts their studies too much. In order to restrict logon hours in windows there is hardly any freeware but it can be easily through simple commands prompt.

We have covered the same topic for Widows Vista- Restrict Computer Usage In Windows Vista

You can use the following commands to restrict logon or access to windows for specific users in windows xp.

Fix:

1. Open Start Menu >> Run, type “cmd” and press Enter key on the keyboard.

2. Now suppose the username for which you want to restrict windows logon in between specific time interval is Harry 

To set, the time limit the user “Harry” to login Monday – Friday between 8am and 5pm, then you would need to type the following commands at the command prompt

net user Harry /time:M-F,08:00-17:00

same as above, but if you are using a 12-hour clock then type

net user Harry /time:M-F,8am-5pm

here’s a more elaborative command to specify different times for different days:

net user Harry /time:M,4pm-7pm;T-TH,16:00-18:00;F-SU,11am-9pm

These commands restrict a user from logging on, however they do not force a logoff when a user is already logged in.

Note: These logon hours do not have an effect Administrator level accounts, so first make sure that the user account does not have administrative privileges. 

Whenever you want to remove the time restrictions, type the following command at the command prompt

net user Harry /time:all

3. Exit from command prompt

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One of our readers asked a question :

How can I set the usage time on my computer, so that I can prevent my kids to use computer too much? It is impacting their studies.

It can be the case with teacher students, employer employee, or parents and kids where user wants to restrict the user of computer to other in some way.

To this I would answer that the best way to sort it out is to talk to your kids, but if that does not work in your case, we have a solution for you. Microsoft Windows Vista as a built in feature of setting the computer usage policy.

The feature we are talking about is Parental controls. In this article we are going to discuss how you can set the parental controls and how you can use it.

Fix:

In first place, you need to have an Administrator right account. After this create a user account for your kids with limited privileges.  To create a new user, go to Control Panel > User Accounts and create a new limited account if it is does not already exist.

Set up Parental Control

1. Go to Control Panel > Parental controls as shown below:

2. On Parental control Screen, select the account you want to restrict.

3. Apply the parental control and set the usage settings as shown below:

4. You can set the Web Filter to filter abusive or objectionable websites. You can restrict games and certain applications like chats etc. You can also define hours of the day for which the computer use is allowed or for which it is blocked for the user.

See the example below, in which, there allowed usage is for 4 hours each day on weekdays and 6 hours on weekends.

Hope you find the article useful and kids please don’t hate us for it.

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2010 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.