Unable to make changes to parental controls

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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!!!