The Internet contains a ton of information that no hardbound encyclopedia (or CD program, for that matter) can ever match. Unfortunately, it also contains mature content that we wouldn’t want children to easily access. Luckily, Windows has settings we can tinker with to prevent kids from accidentally visiting web sites inappropriate for their age level.
This article is shows you how to set-up Parental Controls on your computer to protect your children by creating a special account for them to use.
Activating Parental Controls
1. To start, log in using any account with administrative rights. Usually, your main account has administrative rights. If you’ve been reading our article on how to Add Extra Security to Your Computer With Multiple Accounts, then you’ll have a head start here.
Once you’ve logged into your computer on your administrator account, open the Start Menu, look for the Control Panel item and then click it.
Before you proceed, here’s a little summary of what you’ll be doing. First of all, you’ll soon be changing some properties of an existing user. Specifically, you’ll be implementing what’s called ‘Parental Controls’ on a user account. If you don’t already an alternate user set up on your machine, reference this article.
Once you a Standard User account, you’ll be ready to implement ‘Parental Controls’ on it.
Be warned that you can’t apply Parental Controls to the Guest account. What’s more, it’s recommended you disable the Guest account if you want to activate “Parental Controls.” Otherwise, anyone seeking to bypass the “Parental Controls” can just log in using the Guest account.
With that said, let’s proceed by turning off the Guest account.
3. In the Control Panel, look for the ‘User Accounts and Family Safety’ icon and select ‘Add or remove user accounts’.
4. Since we’d like to make changes to the Guest account (i.e., we want to turn it off), click on the Guest Account icon.
5. Click on ‘Turn off the guest account’.
6. You’ll then be taken back to the window displaying all accounts in your system. Notice that the Guest account is now off. Click the back button found at the upper left corner of this window to be brought back to the Control Panel.
7. In the Control Panel, look for the ‘User Accounts and Family Safety’ icon and select ‘Set up parental controls for any user.’
8. Choose a Standard User you’d like to implement Parental Controls on.
9. Once inside the User Controls window, select the following options:
- Parental Controls > On, enforce current settings
- Activity Reporting > On, collect information about computer usage.
The moment you turn Parental Controls on, the Windows Settings (initially grayed at the bottom of the screen) will activate and you can make more specific changes there. The default settings are usually sufficient so we’ll leave them alone. Click the ‘OK’ button.
10. There you have it- Parental Controls for that Standard User account are now turned on!
Save up to $595 instantly on the HP Pavilion dv4t
