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
    2020-12-06T14:42:50+00:00

    I would say good bye to Windows 10. Had a good run with Microsoft Windows, but this is how far it has gone, it is not even able to make this simple feature to work. 

    Microsoft keep losing markets, from education, business and now family.

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-12-06T13:23:02+00:00

    I deleted the folder but the parental controls still cannot work.

    C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Parental Contols

    Any other suggestions?

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-11-30T19:12:33+00:00

    The kids go around this "family security" in minutes. This is just one of ways how they do it, and there are more ways:

    1. They go to hotmail, or outlook.com and create an account, specify that they are 30 years old
    2. They add that account to Windows 10 via "Add school or work account" button in Settings
    3. Family restrictions gone, they are treated like adult, with all dark internet ..videos ..hub and whatever sites fully open and working.

    No any local admin or parent password asked from Windows side. No age control after this, Chrome is installed (no admin rights needed for that), and statistics about visited pages for parents via Edge are gone too, but they switch whole family security off. I activated a setting to only allow apps from the Store, but it is not respected, kids can launch any .exe.

    This system can only protect grandmothers, who do not need it already.

    The improvement in Windows 10 version 20H2 is that a utility that was promoting kid accounts to PC administrators (they were downloading an .exe file from the internet, which was promoting kid accounts to administrators without any admin password), no longer works. Until now, they not yet figured out how to become PC admin, after PC was upgraded to 20H2, which is a security improvement. But Family Security does not work, as the kids can switch it off themselves.

    Do not be naïve about iPad, same problems. It took 3 hours for the kids to completely remove Screen Time without knowing anything, with latest 14.2 version, after I gave to them newest iPad with Screen Time enabled, with the hope that I can physically take away Windows PC and protect them giving iPad instead. They just reboot iPad or iPhone, do a few clicks very fast (will not disclose for now, I will write to Apple security email first), and they get to an option to take Screen Time code away - it is active for a few seconds until family restrictions are applied (too late, they switch them off before they are applied). Again, full dark internet available, no any age control for web content etc., so ero (must be a stronger word here) and gaming entertainment goes on at full, keeping the teacher talking to himself in background, who is trying to give lessons via Teams to kids at home during corona, while parents must be at work.

    More respect is deserved by the working parents from the big IT companies. Parents are out of time and skills to fight with dark internet without proper - working - harmful content restriction solution from MS and Apple. Without family security or Screen Time type of kid protection systems working properly, everyone below 18 yo should be banned to use the internet devices, based on content that is freely available on them.

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-11-30T15:13:49+00:00

    In less than a week, my kids found a way around the time limits I set in my Family Account. If my kids don't sign in to their Xbox account, can they play games and just not save their progress?

    That's what seems to be happening and it's annoying. I'd just like the device to let them play and when their time runs out, I'd like it to warn them, then turn off or not let them start another game.

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