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
    2020-09-29T06:57:53+00:00

    Wish there was a magic answer to those having problems. 

    Online school is started, my kid is almost finished his grounding from abusing his computer time

    4 computers my two kids uses at various locations are tracking and reporting. 

    Specific app blocking and limits are working, web content block and limitations are working. Time range and total time. 

    I'm informed of purchases. 

    Family safety app on Android is stable these days and I can process requests from kids on the app or via email. 

    I wished there were more timestamp info for app usage

    Again, wish there clear answer for others problems. My problem with a specific computer was fixed but I'm not sure what was the cause of the problem in the first place

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-09-28T16:09:15+00:00

    Correct. The limits do not work, the reporting is always off.

    MS does not care about this feature, i dont believe it is even being worked on anymore...

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-09-28T15:42:24+00:00

    This is the most frustrating experience that I ever had. We bought a laptop for my son last month and added his account in my family account. We then linked his laptop to his account and set time limits. It worked for two weeks and then stopped working completely. I noticed my son could be playing roblox hours and hours until I dragged him out of his room. Occasionally I would receive a pop up notification from my cell phone saying my son is requesting extra time. The second I pressed allowing "15 minutes" more on my phone, an error message will appears saying something like "it is not you, it is us..." I tried to reply to the same email request on my computer, it then says "We don’t have anything to show you at this link. Try searching for what you want, instead." I have not received any weekly report of my kid's computer use for the past three weeks. Basically this App is USELESS in my opinion. :(

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-05-05T23:22:46+00:00

    is there any other software we can buy that will do this given that microsoft will not fix this feature

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