Parental  Controls Buggy

I am using the timer feature and sometimes does not time out. Also it is supposed to log out after 10 min of inactivity but the time must keep on ticking. Any help would be appreciated.
FYI upgraded from Tiger to Snow Leopard.
Thanks

Hello jkzech & welcome to the forums.
Have you had a chance to try this with more than one account?
If not, create another user account, just for testing, and set it up with the desired parental controls and see if it is ok or not...

Similar Messages

  • Parental controls so buggy as to be unusable

    Leopard is running on my MacBook without anything more than a few idiosyncrasies. On my family's iMac, the situation is different. First, there have been two system freezes--that's two more than I have ever had on any OSX mac.
    The main area of bugginess so far is the parental controls feature. I set it up to limit iChat and email contacts, and to automatically block adult content on the internet. Here are the problems I have had so far.
    1. Email permissions: My daughter attempted to send an email to an unknown contact (her math teacher). I received a permission request via email. There was a button to allow the contact. I clicked on the button from both my laptop and from the iMac--it had no effect in either location. It was like clicking on a non-active part of a screen. When I checked her email (.mac account), it was still awaiting authorization. I had to turn the email screen off to allow her to complete her homework. Strike one.
    2. Internet blocking: My daughter encountered a block attempting to go to a usda nutrition planning site. This doesn't bother me--no filter is perfect. The blocker opens a window for an administrator to authorize access. I typed in my account and password, and the window disappeared, and routed me back to the block notice. I did this five times. When I then opened the systems preferences parental controls section, the authorization showed the entry for the usda site under the specific permissions five times. Nevertheless, the site could not be opened. I attempted to grant permission from my laptop (set up to control remotely) to see if this would make a difference, but it did not. No dice. Again, I had to disable the filter to allow her to finish her homework. Strike two.
    3. Time: I authorized a certain amount of time for her to be on the computer. She had a longer assignment last night and ran out of time. Again, there is a popup to allow extra time. I added an hour and it worked. One hour later, she was not done with her assignment. I attempted to add another hour, and this time it did not work. Again, I tried both from the iMac and my MacBook. I had to turn this feature off (actually to 4 hours) to get her back on. Strike three.
    Thus, in the only three challenges to parental controls, the controls are unusable. We haven't had the occasion to test the iChat controls, but I have little doubt at this point that this would be Strike four.
    I am a multi-mac, multi-ipod, all-out Apple enthusiast. I am going to try to be patient while Apple works out the bugs, but this is hands down the worst out-of-the-box Apple product I have ever encountered. I feel like I payed extra money to downgrade the operating system. VERY DISAPPOINTING.

    I saw this yesterday while teaching a class with a Vintage 2009 Memory Card loaded with original 5D MK 1 images. (Those old tiny memory cards are good for something, eh?). What are you system details? I was going to file a bug on it but want to know if it cross-platform or Mac only.

  • Parental Control ALL Devices

    Hey, I'm trying to add parental controls on my router in order to block certain sites from all devices that connect to my network. I don't want these sites getting through my router at all, regardless of the device, and I don't want any new devices being added to the network to be able to access those sites either. Let me reiterate: I want to COMPLETELY block a set of sites from my home. 
    I've got a Linksys E2500 at home and as far as I can tell, it only allows me to block individual devices from accessing certain sites. Does anybody know how to get the results I'm looking for with this router? If not, does anybody know of a router that Linksys manufactures that offers this capability? Thanks in advance for your help.

    For this purpose I have deployed EA3500 and EA4500 models. These have the parental controls that you want are work well on under 100mb internet connections.
    I don't recommend the update to the Cloud firmware as it is buggy and you lose exacting control over your network but the Classic firmware is available and excellent.
    There is an issue with some ADSL modems but I have a firmware fix for that.
    You would use a combination of parental control and wireless MAC Address filtering. Also if you want to know and label the device on your network DHCP IP Address reservation and label the device there.
    Pick of the Parental Controls on these models:
    Parental Control:
    Wireless MAC Address Filter:
    Please remember to Kudo those that help you.
    Linksys
    Communities Technical Support

  • Parental Controls - Internet Access Stopped!

    My wife has a white MacBook running Leopard 10.5.8.  It has worked fine for two years.  Nothing was changed.  She could not change anythign due to being logged into a managed account.
    It could always access the internet over our home (or any available) WiFi perfectly.  All of a sudden, yesterday afternoon, her managed account with "Parental Controls" enabled cannot access any internet.  Safari mentions that it cannot access the server.  When checking the network setting all seems fine, it can access the WiFi router.
    The administrator account can access the internet over WiFi just fine.
    I created another account called Test.  In standard mode it can access the internet over WiFi just fine, but when i turn on "Parental Controls" Safari, or any other internet related program cannot access the internet.  This includes the software update in the Finder.
    What's going on?  i have found similar issues on the Apple Support Communities going back unanswered to 2007!

    Beach Dude,
    I have the same problem, and have had on virtually every operating system since Parental Controls was introduced.
    I have multiple kids with individual accounts. THe perplexing thing is that if I enable parental controls on my daughter's account,  it works fine. I can set time limits, etc... and it works! But if I so much as turn on parental controls in my youngest son's account, every web browser is unable to connect to the internet at all from his account.
    BUGGY software. And apple knows it is buggy, but it isn't core system stuff so they ignore the problem.  I even tried setting up a new account for him and moving his old files over and resetting permissions. Still the same problem.
    I've searched high and low for a solution and found none. I have found a limited number of users with the same complaint...and absolute silence from apple....
    There is nothing on these boards that has worked, and I've tried several different solutions.  Most responses are the useless kind, "change the setting in parental controls" kind of sophomoric advice from people who just assume what the problem is instead of reading our description of it.
    Anyway, I haven't found a good alternate software solution for limiting the time and hours for children's accounts; but I did find an excellent tool for managing internet content access. It is called opendns and it is free and it works!  Do a google search for "opennds" if your primary concern is managing access to web content.  If you come up with a good solution for fixing parental controls so that it doesn't just cut off web access, please let me know here - or if you find an alternate software solution that allows an administrator to set time limits for standard accounts, I would like to know that too.
    Regards

  • Parental Controls Not Consistently Working (Linksyssmartwifi) on EA6500

    Hello,
    I have a Linksys EA6500 with the lastest firmware (1.1.28.147876). I have been having lots of problems getting the parental controls to work properly on this router. I use the Linksys Smart Wifi website as well as directly access the control panel through the router (192.168.1.1).
    My kids like to spend too much time on youtube, so i setup the parental controls so that their devices are blocked from youtube at all times. However sometimes I come home and find that they are able to access youtube without any problems. When logging into Linksyssmartwifi.com I see that the parental controls are "off". For some reason the parental controls sometimes turn themselves "off". I sometimes notice this when I have the SmartWifi app also running on my iPhone. Does the Smartwifi system automatically sync? Do I need to logout of the app on my phone before the parental blocking takes effect? Sometimes I notice that my kids laptop does not show up on "Device List" on the smartwifi menu, even though it is clearly connected to the same network via Wifi.
    This is driving me nuts. The Smartwifi software is buggy and sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't. The firmware is up to date, but i've been having problems with this router ever since I bought it (about 6 months ago). It keeps inconsistently applying the parental controls.
    The Linksyssmartwifi feature and being able to apply parental controls from anywhere in the world seems to be a great idea. But the experience that I've had so far has been incredibly inconsistent. Sometimes the Parental controls work, sometimes they don't. Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

    Saffronfs7 wrote:
    If that's the case, it has a big possibility that your son's computer is using a Static IP Address. I forgot to include the steps on how to set Static IP Address on the computer in my previous post. But here it is: http://kb.linksys.com/Linksys/ukp.aspx?vw=1&docid=aa7f7eb572b6404daf6413c2a643b04a_KBXXX_EN_v1.xml&p...
    If your son's computer is using a Static IP Address, you will be able to see it on the Device List even if it is on the router's network.
    For Static IP assignment, why not just use the Linksys router's DHCP reservation option to associate the device MAC address with a Static IP? That's what I do to get Static IPs for some of my my devices on my Linksys EA4500 router.
    The above linked article talks about changing the TCP/IP settings in the OS to get a Static IP.
    Also, I use the EA4500's (Cloud firmware) Parental Controls to prevent access from certain devices at certain times of the day. That mechanism has never flaked out on me, and has never turned itself OFF unless I turn it OFF.

  • Parental controls a nuisance since Yosemite

    Since the change to Yosemite Parental Controls "misbehaves":
    - when granting extra time the extra time is "lost" whenever the user logs out or even goes to sleep mode. Until 10.9 that wasn't the case and extra time was kept for the remainder of the day.
    - whenever any other change is performed in parental controls (e.g. granting access to a new website), extra time is lost as well and the (parentally controlled) user is logged out.
    - stupid but not a real problem: the audio warning that time is about to expire is still English-only but the English text is now read with German pronounciation ("parental controls log out in xxx minutes").
    Any idea if this can be rectified by the user or is a bug thats need fixing. (I do hope it's not a feature).

    Hi,
    I have experienced the same problems, and others.
    For example, the website blocker "Allow access to only these websites" is not working as expected. All allowed websites work ok (as expected). However, several websites not on the "allowed" list are accessible but some random ones are not. There does not seem to be a pattern.
    Under yosemite I cannot find any way of resetting the parental controls or getting them to work as expected. I have searched for a solution including deleting the files in /Library/Managed Preferences, turning off the controls and turning them back on again and rebooting. I wonder now if Yosemite stores the control files in the /Library/Managed Preferences directory at all any more. The files correctly disappear when you turn the controls off, but then when you turn them back on again the last known configuration is restored, so they really do not go away and supposedly are stored somewhere else. But where?
    The App management controls do seem to work ok. However, unless the web blocking code is made to work then parental controls right now are useless (actually, worse than useless as they are misleading people into thinking sites are being blocked when they are not).
    Parental Controls have often been buggy in Mac OSX and I am not sure why. I can imagine some parents/employers getting litigious.
    Yosemite 10.10.1

  • Parental Controls Broken After Updating an Application

    I'm using Parental Controls (remotely) under 10.5.4 to manage what applications can be opened in a small lab. This works well until I need to update an application on the lab computers. I'll use Firefox as an example, but this happens with all applications.
    - I have a version of Firefox on all lab computers (3.0) and Firefox is allowed under parental controls. Everything works.
    - I update Firefox to 3.0.1. (In this case, I simply overwrote the older version of firefox, but I get this problem when updating applications with installers.)
    - If I remotely look at the Parental Controls settings for the lab computer, I can see that Firefox is still allowed (checked)
    - Now, on the lab computer, I log into the managed account and try to open Firefox, I get a warning about the application not being on the allowed list.
    - I log out of the lab computer, and again, access the parental controls setting remotely. Now Firefox is Not Allowed (unchecked).
    - I check the box to allow Firefox
    - Now when I log into the managed account, the new version of Firefox opens.
    Some fixex / workarounds I have tried:
    - After updating Firefox, I remotely accessed the parental controls settings and first disallowed (unchecked) Firefox, close parental controls, reopened it, and then allowed (checked) Firefox. When logged into the managed account, opening Firefox produced the not allowed error. When I return to the Parental Controls settings, Firefox is now Not Allowed (unchecked). Checking the box to allow Firefox fix the error.
    - I've tried restarting after updating Firefox and it did not work.
    My guess:
    I assume that Leopard keeps a list of applications and versions installed on the computer. Parental Controls allows a specific combination and any update will break the parental controls. To allow this updated application to be opened, its old entry in the list must be updated to reflect the new version. The only way I have figured out how to do this, is to try and open the updated application and fail. Then I can finally allow the updated version.
    Does anyone know of an automated or scritable way to do this. I have tried working with lsregister, but have not had any success. I need a way to force Leopard to reload / refresh its list of installed applications, with having a user logged into the console.
    For a different solution, does if you can send a UNIX command to machine sitting on it login screen, that will cause the machine to login as a local console user. I could then send "open /path/to/updated app" and a logout to force the application list to be refreshed.
    Many Thanks in advance for any help.

    Hi! Did you ever receive any feedback on this issue?
    I am interested since I have noticed the exact same frustration with Parental Controls since updating to 10.5.
    While a very good idea, I think the parental controls, especially with respect to permissions about applications is utterly useless at the moment. It is completely stupid that I have to reset the permissions for applications each and every time I update an application. I have three children who use the computer and I don't want them using every bit of software on the eMac. They are naturally curious and will click on programs that can do damage without realizing is.
    I have also turned off any parental controls regarding web browsing but my children still hit many sites that are blocked by Parental Controls. I do have a linux gateway that does the filtering quicker and better.
    If anyone at Apple is listening ... please spend some time to fix this for the next update.
    Thank you.

  • With Parental Controls on, Wacom Tablet pressure sensativity will not work.

    I run several high-end Mac Art and Photo-based labs and have run into an issue with Leopard's Parental Controls and Wacom Tablets - when I choose to limit the programs that my users (students) can use, Wacom Tablets will lose functionality under those logins - and it seems only to be pressure-sensitive functions. I've tried several combinations of allowing all programs except utilities, with utilities, etc - no dice - I actually have to turn off "limit programs" and that is the only point that it'll actually let me use all the Wacom's functionality under those managed users - is there a way to fix this?

    ..."I've allowed all Utilities, Applications, etc and no matter what, as soon as I turn on the "only allowed selected programs" option, it won't work."...
    I'm not sure, but it is possible that allowing / disallowing based on the pre-defined categories may not work because the software that Wacom uses on my system is in an atypical location, and has an atypical structure - it actually has one application contained inside another. It may be necessary to approve the apps explicitly.
    Perhaps try either:
    i) Opening "/Library" > "Application Support" > "Tablet" and explicitly dragging any apps present there into the "Parental Controls" pref pane in the panel where the programmes are listed. On my system, the app is called "PenTabletDriver.app"...
    or
    ii) Logging in to the managed account (with application restrictions in place), and trying to launch the "PenTabletDriver.app" programme. If this generates the "application is not allowed" message, it should be possible to "always allow" with "admin" authentication to white-list it at that stage...

  • Parental control - desired features

    I posted the message below to apple TV feedback page and I though I'd share it with you too, and get a penny for your thoughts; perhaps even brainstorm a bit more on the parental control issue, because WE (parents with young children) need a better and easier parental control...
    quote:
    "With great power comes great responsibility"... bringing so much digital content to the living room space: movies, music, youtube videos, etc is a quantum leap in our digital entertainment, but this space we share with our young children, thus they need to be effectively protected. Doing this elegantly as well is an art. We want to be able to filter out explicit content (or access to certain rated material, or certain services) easily, securely and hassle free. As of now (version 2.0.2) I can think of TWO reasons why I absolutely don't want the parental control ON (despite the fact that this leaves my young children exposed):
    - First, the password has to be enter EVERY time I access something restricted. You would say that this is quite normal, however I'd say it's quite a hassle. If I am the adult ready to access restricted content, I have the option to either turn off the parental control temporarily.. with the hassle of having to set the pin again after I am done... or, I have to enter the pin every time. If i access the restricted material now.. it makes sense that I will also be the one accessing the next restricted material in 5 minutes from now. It's a reasonable time-locality principle. Apple TV should be "smart" enough to know that I just entered a pin to access something a minute ago.. thus not needing to ask for the pin again. This smartness doesn't have to be necessarily implicit.. it could be explicit: apple tv can ask me for how long should it remember the entered pin.
    The solution that I have in mind is a Comcast-like parental control that inhibits the parental control for a period of time. Say, i am planning to use the apple tv for an hour.. then I should be able to inhibit the parental control for that given time. This way, I won't be asked to enter the pin over and over again for everything that is restricted. The implementation that I have in mind is: whenever I want to access something restricted.. i will enter the pin.. then instead of just selecting DONE.. I can have the options to unlock for 1 hour.. 2 hours, 4 hours.. and once. These could be easily accessible via the up/down/left/right buttons on the remote (or browse-able)
    - The second BIG BIG reason why i don't want the parental control ON.. is that the pin is VISIBLE! If we are all planing to watch something (buy a movie, which is a restricted service, let's say) I will have to enter the pin in visible for my young children to see. Of course this pin will have to be changed later on to something else to make sure the parental control stays what it's meant to be.. a parental control. What good it is a parental control with a public pin?
    Solution: instead of visible password.. you can allow the option to click the five buttons left/right/up/down/center in a specific order. How many permutation of 5 buttons can we have? 5! = 12*3*45 = 120, but wait... we can press a button multiple times.. so the total number of codes we can enter is.. whatever you want. e.g. if the codes should have 4 "digits", the number of combinations is 5^4 = 625. Anyway, you get the idea. You should absolutely find a way to replace the visible pin with an invisible one.. using the key combinations is one such solution.
    Looking more into the future... a biometric sensor on the remote that will unlock the restricted material instantly by just pressing the finger (fingerprint) on the remote would be awesome. Perhaps this won't make it to the next apple tv remote iteration but it is something that apple is aiming for... ultimate simplicity.
    Also an accelerometer based remote would also make the browsing the apple tv content a LOT faster and smoother than clicking buttons (wii-like remote perhaps?). Clicking and holding buttons (quite hard to press for my taste) to go down to the bottom of a 200 song list is quite painful.
    Also.. one more thing.. it would be nice to have a HOME button similar to the iPhone home.. One click and i'm back to the main menu. Perhaps a double click on the menu button? I hate having to click 5 times to get out of a music location to get to the main menu. Quicker access please!??
    all the best and hope to see these new features soon, so we can ALL enjoy our newly purchased Apple TV.
    Thanks.
    marius giurgi

    I posted the message below to apple TV feedback page and I though I'd share it with you too, and get a penny for your thoughts; perhaps even brainstorm a bit more on the parental control issue, because WE (parents with young children) need a better and easier parental control...
    quote:
    "With great power comes great responsibility"... bringing so much digital content to the living room space: movies, music, youtube videos, etc is a quantum leap in our digital entertainment, but this space we share with our young children, thus they need to be effectively protected. Doing this elegantly as well is an art. We want to be able to filter out explicit content (or access to certain rated material, or certain services) easily, securely and hassle free. As of now (version 2.0.2) I can think of TWO reasons why I absolutely don't want the parental control ON (despite the fact that this leaves my young children exposed):
    - First, the password has to be enter EVERY time I access something restricted. You would say that this is quite normal, however I'd say it's quite a hassle. If I am the adult ready to access restricted content, I have the option to either turn off the parental control temporarily.. with the hassle of having to set the pin again after I am done... or, I have to enter the pin every time. If i access the restricted material now.. it makes sense that I will also be the one accessing the next restricted material in 5 minutes from now. It's a reasonable time-locality principle. Apple TV should be "smart" enough to know that I just entered a pin to access something a minute ago.. thus not needing to ask for the pin again. This smartness doesn't have to be necessarily implicit.. it could be explicit: apple tv can ask me for how long should it remember the entered pin.
    The solution that I have in mind is a Comcast-like parental control that inhibits the parental control for a period of time. Say, i am planning to use the apple tv for an hour.. then I should be able to inhibit the parental control for that given time. This way, I won't be asked to enter the pin over and over again for everything that is restricted. The implementation that I have in mind is: whenever I want to access something restricted.. i will enter the pin.. then instead of just selecting DONE.. I can have the options to unlock for 1 hour.. 2 hours, 4 hours.. and once. These could be easily accessible via the up/down/left/right buttons on the remote (or browse-able)
    - The second BIG BIG reason why i don't want the parental control ON.. is that the pin is VISIBLE! If we are all planing to watch something (buy a movie, which is a restricted service, let's say) I will have to enter the pin in visible for my young children to see. Of course this pin will have to be changed later on to something else to make sure the parental control stays what it's meant to be.. a parental control. What good it is a parental control with a public pin?
    Solution: instead of visible password.. you can allow the option to click the five buttons left/right/up/down/center in a specific order. How many permutation of 5 buttons can we have? 5! = 12*3*45 = 120, but wait... we can press a button multiple times.. so the total number of codes we can enter is.. whatever you want. e.g. if the codes should have 4 "digits", the number of combinations is 5^4 = 625. Anyway, you get the idea. You should absolutely find a way to replace the visible pin with an invisible one.. using the key combinations is one such solution.
    Looking more into the future... a biometric sensor on the remote that will unlock the restricted material instantly by just pressing the finger (fingerprint) on the remote would be awesome. Perhaps this won't make it to the next apple tv remote iteration but it is something that apple is aiming for... ultimate simplicity.
    Also an accelerometer based remote would also make the browsing the apple tv content a LOT faster and smoother than clicking buttons (wii-like remote perhaps?). Clicking and holding buttons (quite hard to press for my taste) to go down to the bottom of a 200 song list is quite painful.
    Also.. one more thing.. it would be nice to have a HOME button similar to the iPhone home.. One click and i'm back to the main menu. Perhaps a double click on the menu button? I hate having to click 5 times to get out of a music location to get to the main menu. Quicker access please!??
    all the best and hope to see these new features soon, so we can ALL enjoy our newly purchased Apple TV.
    Thanks.
    marius giurgi

  • Having trouble setting up parental controls

    Hello, when I set parental controls on the guest account, I still have trouble going to "allowed" sites. An example is, I allow access to google and amazon but when I try to access gmail it won't let me. It says something about a bad connection. The same with amazon; access to the main page is fine but when I try to sign into my account it won't let me.
    Am I missing something?
    thx

    Apparently Parental Controls doesn't allow access to https (secure) sites, which would apply to those sites.

  • I made my main account a parental control account and when I accessed the account created as admin, at the Parental Control options I deleted my main account and now I can't get back in it. I need help with this problem.

    I made my administrator account a parental control account, at the time of creating it, the system asked for my administrator password, to restart the computer, and the new account was created. When I accessed that account at the parental control menu I could see my main account on the list and i deleted the account from that list, and now i'm trying to get back to it but I'm not able to because every time i restart the computer brings me back to the account I created. I searched for help on the web and it says to go to users and select the account I want to restore but I can't do it. Please help.

    User account – restore missing admin

  • How do I install iTunes with a Windows 7 account that uses parental controls?

    I have setup a small computer for my daughter to use, running Windows 7 Home Premium. I've enabled Parental Controls through the control panel. So far, I've been unable to install iTunes for her. If I try running the installer as admin, when I try to run iTunes as her, I eventually get a message telling me that itunes64.msi was rejected by the digital signature policy. If I run the installer as her, I get a message saying the system administrator doesn't allow the app to run; I have added the installer to the list of allowed applications. Anyone know how to install iTunes in this case?

    Hi mlheidt,
    If you are having trouble installing iTunes on your Windows 8 computer you may want to use the following article to help you get it up and running -
    Issues installing iTunes or QuickTime for Windows
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1926
    Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
    Best,
    Brett L

  • ITunes can't access shared library when Vista parental controls are on

    I started a thread back on March 1 2008, but it got archived before it could be answered, see:
    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1420673&tstart=0
    I'm using 64 bit Vista with iTunes version of 8.0.2.20, but I don't believe this issue has anything to do with the 64 bit versus 32 bit iTunes versions.
    The exact message is:
    "The shared library "libraryname" is not responding. (-39)
    Check that any firewall software running on either the shared computer or this computer has been set to allow communication on port 3689."
    But if I turn off Parental Controls, the shared library is accessible, it all works fine. This has nothing to do with the iTunes store (and potential web site blocking), I just want to allow shared library access while leaving parental controls on.
    Any ideas?

    This question has been around for almost two years now with no answer...very frustrating and disappointing that no one from Apple can step in and assist. I have set up the port number on my firewalls, both Windows and McAfee, as per the iTunes message and it still does not work...so I am now at a loss.
    Turn off parental conrols and it all works perfectly...turn it on and library is visible but not accessible...PLEASE can someone help with this!!!
    Thanks.

  • Safari has stopped working properly since upgrading to Mountain Lion.  Have parental controls in place and it will not add websites.  Also short cuts at top of tabs now all messed up!

    Since upgrading to mountain lion the other day (from lion) safari has not been working properly.  I have parental controls in place but seem unable to add new web pages to allowed list - wasn't expecting to have to anyway - these are webpages that were working perfectly well on safari prior to upgrade.  Also the shortcuts above the tabs on safari are all now messed up.
    Any advice on how to fix - I am not a computer expert so keep it simple please!
    In the meantime I am having to use Firefox.
    Thanks
    Andrew

    Since upgrading to mountain lion the other day (from lion) safari has not been working properly.  I have parental controls in place but seem unable to add new web pages to allowed list - wasn't expecting to have to anyway - these are webpages that were working perfectly well on safari prior to upgrade.  Also the shortcuts above the tabs on safari are all now messed up.
    Any advice on how to fix - I am not a computer expert so keep it simple please!
    In the meantime I am having to use Firefox.
    Thanks
    Andrew

  • Really confused here. I have somehow created both a managed account and an administrator account. The admin acct is now highlighted in system preferences. We are now blocked from using our computer because parental controls keeps popping up.

    In attempting to add a music lesson program for my daughters band lessons we have messed up our computer. I now have both a managed account and an administrator account (both in my name).  It is using the managed account now and not letting use the Internet because parental controls keep popping up. I would like to delete the managed account and get back to the admin account but I have no idea what my login is for the admin account. We have never had to use it before this problem started and what we thought it was when we set it up does not work. Any ideas?

    If the user account is associated with an Apple ID, and you know that account password, the Apple ID can be used to reset your user account password.
    Otherwise, boot into Recovery by holding down the key combination command-R at startup. Release the keys when you see a gray screen with a spinning dial.
    When the OS X Utilities screen appears, select Utilities ▹ Terminal from the menu bar.
    In the Terminal window, type this:
    resetpassword
    That's one word with no spaces. Then press return. A Reset Password window opens.
    Select your boot volume if not already selected.
    Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.
    Follow the prompts to reset the password. It's safest to choose a password that includes only the characters a-z, A-Z, and 0-9.
    Select  ▹ Restart from the menu bar.
    You should now be able to log in with the new password, but you won't be able to unlock the Keychain. If you've forgotten the Keychain password (which is ordinarily the same as your login password), there's no way to recover it. You’ll need to reset your keychain in the preferences of the Keychain Access application.

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