Here are a few things you can do with Windows 7 to limit your child’s access on the computer online or offline, even when you’re not around to watch them and control their access.
First, you need two accounts. One login account for yourself with Administrator privileges, and one for your child with limited access.
Below are instructions to setup that secondary account for your child and then how to modify that account so they have limited access.
- Go to the Control Panel, open “User Accounts”
- Click “Manage another account”
- Click “Create new account”
- Type in a name for the user (your child), ensure “Standard user” is selected, click “Create account”.
- You now have both accounts showing. your administrator account you already had, and now an account for your child. Next is setting the security permissions.
- Click on “Set up parental controls”.
- Click on your child’s user account name
- Click on “On, enforce current settings”.
- Click on “Time Limits” to highlight the times you don’t want them to have access to the computer. Then they can’t login. It will tell them there are login time restrictions preventing them from going on the computer.
- Click “Games” to choose if they are allowed to play games, and if so, what game ratings they are allowed to play, and if certain specific games are blocked.
- Click “Allow and block specific programs” to grant or revoke access to specific programs on the computer.
That’s all. Since they are only a “Standard user” they won’t have access to change these settings. Only you “Administrator” have access to make any changes. Make sure you have a password on your administrator account, otherwise they can easily log in as you and gain access to whatever they want. including lifting the restrictions from their own account.