Hello everyone,

a friend of mine recently bought a second-hand laptop but, as we soon discovered, the seller left parental controls on it. The computer locks itself at a set time every day and doesn’t allow the user to log back in.

So I tried to help. I created a bootable USB with Windows 10, wiped the disk in the computer and reinstalled. Thinking I had solved the problem, as an OS reinstall should, in this case, I gave it back to my friend. I just received a message from her, that the laptop just locked itself again.

Why is this happening? Are the parental controls somehow tied to a unique identifier, such as the built-in Windows activation code or similar? And, most importantly, how do I remove them?

Thanks a lot :)

  • @BangersAndMash
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    61 year ago

    Is the lock possibly set in the BIOS, not windows? You can often set on and off times there.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      fedilink
      21 year ago

      When it locks, it simply shows a regular Windows… window, that says something about usage time (trying to translate from our language). It doesn’t turn off completely