Limiting internet navigation *time* in Vista

The bottom line is: I want to make my niece hate me.
She's got Vista Home Premium with Parental Control.
I know PC can let me limit the amount of time the 'unprivileged' user can use the computer. I would like to limit the amount of time the user can use the internet (every internet protocol, or a specified internet protocol).

In this way she could use the laptop for her homeworks but not for chatting or other distracting tasks.

How can I do that?

signed
A heartless uncle.

PS
She uses Firefox and Trillian

 

Buy this: http://www.onestopshopcatalog.com/cp192914.html, and when it goes "ding", unplug the ethernet cable.

 

Try windows steadystate. It's a software from Microsoft free of charge.

 

If you really wanted you could install a version of Windows 98 or Windows 95 and never update it-- the periodic bluescreens you'd get would surely limit her time. And it'd be fairly random!

/unhelpful

 

LOL, I was thinking of something a little bit less 'manual' than this.
That's second millennium technology.

 

Can it do that?
I stumbled upon it in another thread, had a look at the webpages but looked more like a 'roll back' utility. Can it really let me set a time window for selected protocols or -at least- programs?

 

I know steady state can do these:
Limit the duration of sessions using timers.

 

Yep, but that's what Parental Control already does (more or less, it lets you choose a time window from that hour of the day to that other hour). It means that you can only stay logged on for a certain amount of hours.
I would rather let her use the laptop whenever she wants but the internet (or the programs she uses to access the net) only when her mother wants.

I do not want to limit session time, but internet use.

Thanks for answering.

 

LOL, that's one way to do it

You already know that Vista's parental control system has a "computer use" timer, unfortionetly it doesn't allow you to just lock down internet access.

I would normally recommend Windows Live Family Safety and have you deactivate Windows Vista's internet filtering component, but to my knowledge it doesn't include a online timer either.

The only other free filtering service that features an online timer is AOL Parental Controls: https://parentalcontrols.aol.com/pa...b2/home/viewMain.do?NCID=aolcmp00300000002804

This is separate, stand-alone software from the AOL client, but you'll need to create a AOL screenname for each person using the machine for internet access. If you have an AOL e-mail address, you have an AOL screenname and all you'd have to do is create one for your niece (the parental controls software should give you a chance to do this. Make sure you get the "Internet Access Controls" download from the Parental Controls site once everything's set up in order to ensure that all browsers will be filtered. You should see something akin to "For Broadband Users" on the parental controls settings webpage, once setup and signed in.

So, I'd check out AOL's offering, just make sure to deactivate the Web Filtering portion of Vista's parental controls first (you can keep the rest of it, including the User Account timer turned on)

Good Luck,

Ricky

 

I don't know for sure if it would work, I've never tried it, but couldn't you add a firewall rule on a time schedule, bung in the ip address and set it to block by schedule??

 

You could also set up blocks in the router that would prevent that computer from accessing the internet other than during a limited window of time. That way you don't even have to touch her computer, just log onto the router's admin page from your own computer.

 

Two problems:
1) the router is the ISP's and has limited configurability (I have yet to find out which IP it has. Not that I have tried more than the classic 192.168.1.x and 0.x... a few weeks ago)
2) It's not only my niece, but my sister and her husband also surf the web with that PC - on another unprivileged account. They are not computer oriented people and won't be able to put a password "in the WHAT???" ;-)

mmmm...
I might as well write fake version of the .exes and let them call the real exes only in the allowed time windows... But then, I don't think I can get away by renaming Firefox.exe and Trillian.exe... And my niece might find it out in a matter of minutes...

 

mmmm.... I'll have to think about this. I'm not even sure the firewall can accept changes on the fly.. But it could work...