Unable to make changes to parental controls

[Vera Noest]

I recently installed Windows Vista on one of my Desktop. Installation went fine and i used the system so far without any problem. The system has only one account and that is Admin account. Due to some reasons i am trying to make some changed in Parental Control options but it is not allowing me to do so though i am logged in as Administrator. Every time i try making any changes, it gives me an error message saying:

"Unable to make changes to parental controls settings. If this problem persists, contact your system administrator."

Which else Administrator is it talking about? I am the only one and already logged in as Admin. Furthermore i also tried creating a new second Administrator account and tried to make the changes but still the same error message. Any idea what is wrong with this system? Please help.

[Russyan]

Hello Vera, you are not alone with this problem buddy, count me in too. Even i get the same error message whenever i try to make any changes in Parental Controls. In my case the problem started when i installed Microsoft Family Safety, earlier everything was working fine. So i though uninstalling Microsoft Family Safety may help but it dint even after removing it from my computer.

While troubleshooting the same i found that Parental Control service was not running. I tried to start it manually but it is not able to start and gives me an error saying "it can't start because a dependent service is using a different log on account for authentication."

Just like you even i am having a single user account on this computer. I dont know what is going on. Somebody please help me out.

[Wooody]

Well i haven't been in such situation so far though using Vista since a year now, hence dont have any personal experience. But i can let you know something which may help you guys for sure. Lets check out how you can enable the Real Built-in Administrator of the system. Once it is enabled you can login to the same and set up the parental controls. Here we go:

• Click Start menu, type cmd in the search box
• Right click the CMD and select RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR , click Continue if a prompt appears
• A black & white screen will appear, type in the following :
• net_user_administrator_/active:yes
• ( note : the sign " _ " represents a space between words )
• Press ENTER key from your keyboard. The b/w screen will indicate if the command is successful or not. If yes, close the b/w command prompt. If not try again and careful with typo/spacing.
• Log-off. Your screen will show 3 accounts.
• login to the "real" account. The system will start setting up the desktop for the account. After that , try do what you wanted to do all these time.

[Vera Noest]

Thanks for the help Wooody. I followed your suggestions and tried to enable the built-in Administrator but yet un successful. It ends up with an error message saying "system error 5 has occurred. Access is denied." Also let me tell you that when i click Start > CMD > Right click, there is no option for me to run it as an Administrator.

Now what?

[Russyan]

Yeah, even i had the same problem. Vista wont give me any option to Run it as Admin and it wont allow me to enable the built-in Administrator as well. After reading some articles on web and combining my personal experience using windows, i thing the best fix for such problems is a clean re-installation of operating system. I think we should go for it, atleast i am going to re-install my Vista tonight because to me it seems like even Microsoft has no solution for this.

[ericb1001]

Hey Guy, THIS IS A SOLUTION!!!!!! I was having trouble with this crap but I have a few other standard accounts. I was trying to put parental controls on a non-password protected account. I was getting that error! I ended up trying it on another account that had a password protection set-up. THIS WORKED!!!! I believe that you have to have a password on the account you are trying to configure. Hope this helps you guys!!!