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Why can't I find the Parental Controls on Windows Vista?

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As I wrote about yesterday the Parental (Family Safety) controls on Windows Vista provide comprehensive access control features.

Shortly before visting someone to demonstrate these features I decided to run through them once again on my own - to my horror I couldn't find the Control Panel applet! After twenty mintues of stress due to needing to leave for the train without a working demo I realised what had changed since it last worked - I'd joined the machine to a domain.

Upon removing my machine from the domain the Parental Control applet returned to the Control panel post reboot. It makes sense that GENERALLY consumers are unlikely to have domains at home and therefore Parental controls are not required for domain joined machines. It would have been nice if the user interface made this apparent! I'll feed it back to the product group.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 01, 2006
    Perhaps it should get renamed to "Boss Controls" when you join a domain :-)
  • Anonymous
    September 01, 2006
    Interesting point Steve, potential talking point here. What about those of us who run a domain at home as part of a home office or due to work commitments (thinking of remote workers here), but also use it as a family network for the kids to roam the web?  Surely plenty of parents would relish the chance to use these controls as well as having a domain?
  • Anonymous
    September 12, 2006
    Steven> I agree - I've fed it back to the product group.
  • Anonymous
    September 12, 2006
    Nik> Good idea