Unable to make changes to parental controls

I am trying to make changes to parental controls. I get an error message
that reads: "Unable to make changes to parental controls settings. If this
problem persists, contact your system administrator."

I am an administrator on the computer. I have tried creating a new account
and making changes there and that did not work.

Its funny cause I am having the same problem with mine. But mine occurred
when I downloaded the Microsoft Family Safety and then deleted it because it
simply sucked. But when I tried to adjust the levels for the built in
Parental Controls I get the same response.

Well it not even a matter of what specific things I am trying to change...
But even just to open up Parental Controls all together it would even allow
you to see the screen.

Though I have done some digging and found
that the Parental Control service can't start. When I try to manually start
it, it tells me it can't start because a dependent service is using a different
log on account for authentication. I am stumped and would really like an
answer. It would be nice to be able to give my child access to the internet
through his own logon. I have not changed the authentication accounts at all.

My computer is 6 months old (Gateway), and up until recently I had parental
controls over my daughter's account. A few weeks ago, I began experiencing
the exact same issue as Joe. I even had the GEEK SQUAD come out and help,
but they were unable to figure it out. I get the exact same error as Joe:
"Unable to make changes to parental controls settings. If this problem
persists, contact your system administrator." I AM the System Admin and I
cannot set up my daughters account with a password any longer and use the
parental controls without getting the above mentioned error. She basically
has full access to the computer, websites etc. As long as I don’t add a
password and/or parental controls, it works. Basically the parental software
is useless for me. I have not downloaded anything that would have interfered
with the software, unless Vista downloaded a change and I am unaware of that
change.

First, please check your own account. Does it say,a)"
Administrator Password protected " Or, b) " Standard User " ?
If answer is a), please tell me how far did you go before you were
stopped. Did you go as far as" Parental Controls * User Controls "
window ?

Hi Dave ... I am the admin on the computer with a protected password. I get
so far as clicking all the necessary buttons to put the parental control on,
time limits etc and when I hit "ok" or "apply" (I am not at that computer
right now to know which button it is), I get the standard "Unable to make
changes to parental controls settings. If this problem persists, contact your
system administrator." As long as I dont create a password for my daughters
account and put parental protection on her sign in name, theres no issues.
Soon as I try to add the parental control it doesnt work. Very frustrating,
considerinng for months it worked fine and was GREAT!! I have a feeling a
'upgrade' was made to the computer through Microsoft and its messed it up
since. I have no added nor deleted anything nor has my daughter to prevent
the parental controls from working. She has FULL access to the computer with
no time limits.

With my limited knowledge, I have only one trump card left. I'm gong to
show you how to enable the Real Built-in Administrator, then login to
that account and see if you can set up the parental controls.
1.) open Start menu, type cmd in the search box
2.) look up to the top of the left panel, you'll see cmd , Right
click on it
3.) click RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR , click Continue if a prompt appears
4.) a black & white screen will appear, type in the following :
net_user_administrator_/active:yes
( note : the sign " _ " represents a space between
words )
5.) 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.
6.) Log-off. Your screen will show 3 accounts. The "real" acct, yours,
and your daughter's
7.) 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.
Caustion : a) should you decide to keep that account, make sure to
create a password for it.
b) should you decide to get rid of it, repeat the
procedures EXCEPT in step 4.) type net user administrator /active:no
Please let me know if it's ok this time.

Same issue, I am not able to get into parental controls at all. I have
tried the "path" fix, the "real admin" trick, with UAC, without UAC, yes
the service is running, no there are not any related errors in the event
log.

Of worthy note, I have never tried parental controls without SP1
installed. I don't know if it could be SP1 related.

I haven't tried the UAC as I'm a bit nervous of that all going wrong! Does
this (above) mean that when logged in as the UAC it all looked as though your
normal admin account should be able to make the changes? Or can you only make the changes using the UAC?

I want to change the list of permitted programs to allow my children to use
some new software I've installed for them since originally setting up the
allowed programs list. I can go in and change all the tick boxes that I want,
but when I click on OK to save the changes I get the same message as the
others here. I am logged on as 'Computer Administrator'.

I can also create (and delete) a new user account, but cannot apply any
parental controls to that account - just get the same old 'unable to make
changes to parental controls settings. If this problem persists consult your
system administrator.' as soon as I select the new user from the list of user
accounts, so in that instance the parental controls window won't even open.

Anyway, parental controls do not and have never worked as far as I know.
This is still an open issue for me, and I suspect many other people.

Basically, trying to open parental controls gives a "Unknown user name
or bad password." error in the security logs.

Any insight, or information regarding this would be appreciated.

I am having this same problem and found this thread - i'm hoping to
get this resolved as i have been LOVING Vista since we bought this
computer last fall. I installed some math software for the littles
and wanted them to be able to access it from the children's server - i
went to the control panel - user accounts - clicked children's
account, and the dialog opens up (with all the options) but i'm "not
allowed" to change anything. Any ideas for me?

With my limited knowledge, I have only one trump card left. I'm gong to
show you how to enable the Real Built-in Administrator, then login to
that account and see if you can set up the parental controls.
1.) open Start menu, type cmd in the search box
2.) look up to the top of the left panel, you'll see cmd , Right click
on it
3.) click RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR , click Continue if a prompt appears
4.) a black & white screen will appear, type in the following :
net_user_administrator_/active:yes
( note : the sign " _ " represents a space between words )
5.) 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.
6.) Log-off. Your screen will show 3 accounts. The "real" acct, yours,
and your daughter's
7.) 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.
Caustion : a) should you decide to keep that account, make sure to
create a password for it.
b) should you decide to get rid of it, repeat the procedures EXCEPT in
step 4.) type net user administrator /active:no
Please let me know if it's ok this time.

I tried this and it tells me "system error 5 has occurred. Access is
denied." First off though, when I right click in the box that opens up
after searching for CMD, there is no option to "run as administrator".

Let me tell you about my issues with parental controls.

I have been able to restrict to only website on their logon, however, I
want to restrict all programs except internet explorer so all they can
do is use the one website and not change any settings or gain access to
other programs.

I can get into the Parental Control panel, then it allows me to get
into the user controls for the different names. Then I can change the
Windows Vista Web Filter. However, whenever I click on "allow or block
specific programs", I get the following message "unable to make changes
to parental controls settings. If this problem persists, see your system
administrator".

Sorry tfehler, I reinstalled my OS and it never was an issue again. I
suspect that even Microsoft can't figure it out. There is plenty of
complaints out on the net, but absolutely no resolution. Certainly no
one here knows how to fix it.

I am curious though... Have you changed (stopped, disabled, enabled,
etc.) any of the services? (Changed ANY service from default even if
you changed them back later.)
If so, which services have you changed?

Yeah, same here, using the "real admin" account didn't change the error.
Honestly, at this point, any errors like this have only one proven fix
so far... An OS re-install. It seems like a lot of people get this
error and no one (including M$) knows how to fix it.

Thanks for the tip. I guess I'll have to dig up the software and give
that a try....I started using Mac right after I bought this PC but some
websites only work with PC which is why I keep it on hand. Every time I
try to use it, I am reminded why Mac is so much better. (No OS issues,
no lengthy updates and restarts, no memory consuming virus scans, and
the start up time is about 10 times longer on the PC vs. Mac and both
are the same age)

I have tried the above to no avail... I cannot even open the Parental
Controls page... whenever I click on it, it either does nothing at all
or it flashes a page which disappears just as quickly as it appeared.

I had the same problem. I've had strange things happen with firewalls
and video drivers in the past, so I thought I would start down that road
as a Windows update would be to obvious and the issue would have been
resolved by now considering their have been postings for the past year
on this issue. In my case it turned out to be my video driver (I
think). I have an ATI video card and I had downloaded and installed an
updated driver from ATI's website a few months back. I also messed
around with some of the advanced settings. I did notice that the
Parental Control service was set to Manual so I changed it to Automatic
and started the service but I still couldn't change the settings for
users it would load about 1/2 the screen for about 1/2 a second then
give me the error. It would only do that the 1st time I would try
accessing it after rebooting the computer. Then it would just give the
error message every time I tried accessing it. I verified it's
dependent services were running as well. I started poking around in the
Windows Firewall to see if there might be some clue there. I turned it
off and then changed my mind and turned it back on. Then I went ahead
and uninstalled the video driver rebooted the computer and set the
display driver to use the Standard VGA driver and rebooted the computer
again. Then I reinstalled the driver I had downloaded and now I can get
in to parental controls. If that didn't work I was going to try my
original video driver. My guess is that there was some setting I had
changed for the video adapter and uninstalling and reinstalling the
driver set all of it's settings back to their defaults.

Unable to make changes to parental controls settings. If this problem persists, see your system administrator.
I am the administrator, I get this message when I click on a user to set parental control settings.
Can you help?

[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!!!