ms family account screen time limits not working

Anonymous
2019-11-03T16:29:00+00:00

Hi

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

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Family and online safety

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2020-09-26T00:35:11+00:00

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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  1. Anonymous
    2021-03-28T13:43:50+00:00

    Hey everyone.  

    I have been experiencing this issue every so often, it causes my sons family time to fail to work.

    The solution above works.  However I have discovered that if you give more time on either windows or Xbox then it breaks and you have to delete the folders again. 

    I need to experiment more with the settings but I believe it will break if you use the my parent is here or if you send a request,  when it pops up on the screen.

    I believe that changing the settings on the  app and the website also cause the issue but I’m not 100% certain and need to test some more.

    Hope this helps someone.

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-02-15T19:22:23+00:00

    Same here! it worked fine all last year. Seemed to stop in December/ January and i can't figure it out. I don't believe if I run a Windows update it'll fix it! 

    My son has 3.5 hrs weekdays, 4 at weekends so it has nothing to do with what hours you put in. It always worked and now it doesn't.

    I'm on a Mac and use Chrome to log in to my microsoft account so it doesn't matter what version I'm on. I'm the owner and my son is added to that. I can monitor his activity and used to be able to control screen time but no more.

    It's a bit **** that a tech giant like Microsoft cannot fix this as it's obvs an issue that has been affecting a lot of people for quite some time now.

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-01-12T10:09:50+00:00

    I have a 13 year old son at home. I have had the same problem for a while now as everyone else. Now  I figured out what he did. He disabled services https://youtu.be/x0bJ67VpC8w

    All you have to do is log in to his profile and enable services. Reverse procedure from this:

    Open task manager, then head over to services tab, look for this service 'WPCMONSVC'; right click, then click on stop to temporarily stop the service. Open services menu by clicking on the link labeled 'open services' at the bottom of task manager screen. Once the services screen pops up, search for 'parental controls'; once you've seen it, Right click and go to properties.. Then change the start-up type to disabled

    It works now, but I’m afraid not for long

    This is a major problem for me with microsoft’s implementation of ‘family safety’ ! No child account should be able to disable services without admin rights, which of course need to be controller by the parents.

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-07-01T02:03:15+00:00

    I have the same issue.  Been having trouble for months.  I have 3 computers each running Windows 10.  Time limits work on 1, not on the other two, which means I have kids getting up in the middle of the night playing Minecraft and then being totally worthless the next day.  This is a big problem.

    Accounts sync'd, and sync'd again.  At this point I'd rather not have the computers in my house.  It's far more trouble dealing with the inability to properly control time limits for kids.

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