ms family account screen time limits not working

Anonymous

Despite trying all the suggestions I can find online to fix it screen time limits have not been working for months. The limit is set correctly but Windows appears to ignore it. Family activity reporting shows that the activity duration is greater than the limit set.

Thanks

Mik

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Anonymous

I too had struggled to get this feature to stick properly to one of my three kids. Two were working fine, one not. All identical hardware, so it was highly irritating one was out of alignment to the others.

Reinstalled the OS on his PC, still no joy. Removed him from family group, tried everything on the suggestions and they all were useless.

What I noted was that the time limit that I setup was being ignored but there was still a time limit. Instead of 1.5 hours, it was 4 hours per day. No matter what I set it to, it remained. However, if I turned off limits on his account, instantly the setting on his PC was aware that the limits were removed. When I imposed them once more, the same 4 hour limit (rather than the 1.5 hour limit) was turned back on.

I concluded that in my case, the time limits set on the website were being ignored or overruled by something on the PC. The feature was linked though, reporting functions worked, and clearly when I switched the time limits off, they applied so no issue with the account itself.

I searched around a bit more, and saw this bit of advice:

Delete the Parental Control Settings in the following path:

On the Start screen, type C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Parental Controls and press Enter.

Delete the folder and files under this location. When the user logs in again, it will force a check with the settings stored online and redownload the settings.

The reason this didn't get fixed when I did a reinstall of the OS was that I kept files/settings and it never got wiped in the OS re-install.

As soon as I did this, the correct time limit and schedule was finally applied to my son on his PC. No idea why it got stuck, or why it would never overwrite, but it cleared it. Hopefully future adjustments to the time limits and schedule will work as normal from now on.

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Anonymous

2020-10-13T13:44:02+00:00

I‘ve spent hours searching and trying different suggestions, and finally find something that worked by chatting with Microsoft Support. Here's what I've tried.

1) Re-booted

2) Updated Windows

3) Updated all apps

4) Verified account

5) Removed account from family and added back in

6) Clicked the "fix account" button

7) Found the Microsoft app to fix account issues, which said it could not run on my Windows 10

So pretty much everything that has worked for some users did not work. And from what I see, these didn't solve problems for many users. Microsoft Support told me to find the "Parental Control" folder at C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Parental Contols, and remove the file under that folder as it is corrupted. After I did that, it still did not work. However, as I rebooted again, it worked.

I have to say that I got very frustrated with this after spending hours and finding no solutions anywhere. Microsoft should have resolved this bug years ago or at least include this work-around on its official support page.
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Anonymous

2020-05-12T07:17:05+00:00

Screen time limits have never worked for me. I've tried all of the ideas in this thread and the closest I got to it working is that it now kicks the kid off at some random time in the afternoon even though I have the limit set for all devices at 8pm everyday. It's an exercise in frustration.

I think paying for third party software is going to be the only solution, maybe something bundled with a good web filter that also works with Firefox and Chrome. I wish MS would stop adding half-baked broken and info-sucking cloud features to Windows and focus on making sure the updates don't break the system.
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Anonymous

2020-03-28T07:53:26+00:00
I am experiencing a similar strange issue. I keep setting the screen limits and reduce the max scheduled time.. it works for that session and then defaults to old precious setting of max scheduled..

even my child has figured this out. He just restarts when i am not looking and restarts the laptop.

i have to log in through my phone several times times in a day to change settings. And if i am busy with something he gies on for hours.

so far I hve tried
1. making sure wr have the updates.
2. setting, saving and restarting
3. removing the child account completely and adding back.
4. raising with Microsoft the issue.
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Anonymous

2020-03-14T16:15:41+00:00

Hi

I'm on a Mac in my Windows online account via a browser trying to fix my son's screen time limits which haven't been working for a few months. The fix mentioned in various links refers to PC users and Windows 10 so doesn't apply to Mac users! Microsoft rarely acknowledged the existence of Mac users and when they do they provided sub-standard solutions.

I can't find any support for Mac users. I'm pretty angry about the situation. Microsoft talk a good game about protecting children but when it comes down to it they fail to deliver.

Trying to get hold of someone at Microsoft is also nearly impossible - it can take days.

Hey ho, rant over.

A
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