Setup Parental Control in Windows 7

Parental Control is a very useful feature that comes with Windows 7 to help parents and guardians manage and restrict PC usage by their kids/siblings. With the help of this feature you can block access to games, let them use PC according to specific rule of time limits and timings and block all applications and games.

Every parent is obsessed with the habit of their kids using PC for longer run which has its own bad effects with various aspects. Firstly that child will go down in his/her studies, secondly it will make his/her eye-sight weak and finally they will be nerds. To over come this problem, the best OS in the World named "Windows 7" has something useful to you. The feature of Windows that I am talking about is "Parental Control" and with this useful feature, you can block access to all games, let them use PC only for allocated time and let them use PC how they should be doing.

So if you want to control your sibling's/kid's PC usage habits, then you are at the right place as I have written a detailed article for helping you set-up Parental Control in your Windows 7 based PC.

So without wasting any time, let us start. First of all you need to add a password to your own admin Windows account as it is a necessary requirement. To add a password, follow the steps provided below.
Note: If your Windows Account is already having a password allocated to it, then skip this step.
  • Click on Start Button and then click on user picture. It will open your account settings.
  • Now select "Create a password for your account" and create a password for your account.
  • Type and confirm the password and add a password hint then.
After creating password create a new account and name it "Home" or "Guests" This is because when we setup parental control, we need a separate password free account on which the restrictions are to be putted. This account is to be used by all other people in your house except you, because you will use admin account.  And the point of adding password in Admin account was that, there will be no restrictions on the admin account as usual but on the other account which is password free will be used by kids and they will be forced to do so because they do not know the password for admin account.

Now to create a new Windows account on your PC, 
  • Click on start button and then on user picture. This will open the user accounts window.
  • Now click on manage other accounts.
  • Now click on "Create a new account" and then type the account name. Let it be named "Home"
  • Select the standard account option which is under the name field and then click on OK
Now from where you click on User accounts window, open it again and then click on Parental Controls which is located in the left-most bottom part. Now it is time to set parental controls on the "Home" account.

When you have clicked on Parental Controls, it will ask you for the account to continue, click on the "Home" account. Now select the following from the window "On, enforce current settings" It will enable parental controls for the "Home" account. After enabling Parental Controls, you will be able to edit three settings namely, Time limits, Games, Allow or block specific programs

Now let us understand what the settings actually mean.

Time Limits
Using this feature, you can let user use or not use PC for specific time. By this setting you can manage the time for which the PC can be used. Please Note, that this setting does not blocks PC usage for specific period of time like one hour or two hour or so. This setting actually lets you specify the hours in which can the PC be used like 10 AM to 8PM for Sunday and 3PM to 8PM in working days. This setting is therefore calender based and NOT magnitude based. You will understand it more clearly by applying it.

To enable time limits, click on "Time Limits" and after clicking on it, you will get a graph like grid in which you can specify timings for PC usage. Now how to set timings? Its very simple, just drag the cursor to tell Windows the PC usage. The blue area will represent the blocked time and the rest of white will represent the allowed time. For example if you DO NOT want to let your child use PC between 3AM to 7AM then the grid will look like this.

Now moving on to next feature, blocking games on PC.

Block games

This feature is less effective because of many reasons. This does not mean that you can't block games completely all games, you can do so too by using the next setting but let me tell you why this settings sucks. Block games settings uses game ratings based on ages and other factors to block games. Firstly this setting is applicable to system pre-installed games like Chess Titans and other useless games. So there is no over all benefit of using this feature. But wait, it doesn't means that you can't block games. In fact you can block each and or even every application from running including games. So I recommend you to use next option.

Allow or Block specific programs

This is the best use of parental control feature of Windows 7. Using this feature, you can allow only specified programs to run or even block each and every program for your kids in your PC. The other benefit of this feature is that no virus can effect your PC when your kids are using pen drives for sharing data. Once this feature is enabled, then you do not to fear of any harm to your PC and games will be completely blocked.

Note:The games and applications will be still available for admin use and will not be blocked permanently so their is no harm for blocking them for kids.

To block and allow specified programs, click on "Allow or block specific programs"  and then click on 
"User can use only programs that I allow". Now Windows will search for all programs installed on your PC and then show you. Click on programs that you want to allow your child to use. Ticking on program's will make them able to be executed by the user other than you. So enable all useful programs that you think will be needed by your kid and all other programs will be left blocked. Optionally you can browse for programs that are not in the list but need to be unblocked.
In Simple Language: Tick on the programs that you want to allow your child to run them from his account and all remaining unchecked (All programs) on your PC will be left blocked.

Whenever your child tries to open any game/applications that is not allowed by you, then this message will appear.

P.S. If you child needs this program for emergency usage, you can allow him/her by using the "Ask an administrator for permission" Which can be accessed from the bottom of the warning box. When you will click on it, it will ask for the password and when you will enter the password, it will ask you to keep blocking or unblock this program.

Conclusion

So the guide finishes for setting up Parental Control feature in Windows 7. I hope you liked it apply it practically on your PC. So now you can manage your child's PC usage habits and be tension free :-)
Feel free to ask any questions and I will try my best to reply to your queries.
Have a good day, you are the most awesome person I have seen in this universe. ;-)