My eldest son (aged 12) has found a way around the NIS2010 safety minder time restrictions so that he can use his computer anytime he likes which defeats the object of the software!
What he does is to try and log on while his time restriction is active which then either gives him a warning that Norton will log him off automatically (unless a parent extends it) or gives him a few seconds to invoke the following. He waits until the very last moment before control reverts to the Windows log on page (after zero seconds if under a timing countdown), right clicks the safety minder icon and initiates the disable safety minder window which needs parental permission to continue. Without closing or cancelling the window, he disregards this window and shifts it off screen and out of sight and continues to do what he wants (I have to commend him for his ingenuity!).
He is a standard user with no administrative privileges.
I have tried Norton support but they were of no use, the first and second operatives deeming it too complicated and the third one initiating a remote re-install which I could have done anyway (which didn't solve the problem)!
The previous version of Norton Safety Minder did not allow this since seem to recall that the screen was locked when the disable safety window came up; the current version doesn't seem to do this.
We are currently investigating the issue, and I can confirm that the behavior is different in v2.0 vs. v1.2
In the mean time you may want to try the "warn" mode which will not log him out. Perhaps you could use that alert to signal to you that he is over time.
The Norton Online Family product will automatically update the Norton Safety Minder agent on monitored computers. To check if you have the latest version you can go to the monitored computer and click on the Norton Safety Minder paw in the tray and select "About Norton Safety Minder". That should show you the latest version.
I am experiencing similar behavior since upgrading to 2.0.0.x. My kids are being timed out even when there is no use. We selected the option to "Count only the amount of time ??? actively uses the computer" but it doesn't seem to work. We selected the "Report the activity" option for now so they don't get blocked.
It now says that there is 1 hr 39 min remaining. Yesterday, when he woke up his computer from standby in the morning, it said that his time was expired already. My daughter was experienceing the same issue. I will continue to monitor to see how things behave. I now have it set to count only the amount of time they actually use the computer. They were originally set to count for time logged in, but until we upgraded from v1 we never observed this behavior.
Our QA team has been trying to reproduce the issue, but no luck so far. We were wondering if you have upgraded to the latest Norton Safety Minder 2.0.0.XX. If so, are you still experiencing the issue?
Thanks for the update. Yes, please let us know if you still experience the issue later. If you do, please tell us what the exact Time Settings you have and steps you or the kid took, so our QA team can reproduce the issue.
My kids are still locked out even though the computer has been in standby all day. Apparently if they are logged in even though the computer is in standby, the usage timer still accumulates.
"Count only the amount of time xxx actively uses the computer" is checked
We are having the exact same problem. We use my son's laptop for homeschooling during the day, and I have had to remove all time restrictions on weekdays because it was locking him out from the moment he woke up in the morning. I also have selected the setting to only count time actually using the computer, but it doesn't make a difference. I have started making my son shut the computer down when he is not using it, hoping that would do the trick, but it has made no difference. I have now disabled to time limitations altogether, but I am eager to hear from someone at Symantec about how this can be corrected.
Just checking to see if you guys are still experiencing the time issue. If you're, I would be glad to set up a remote access session with each of you and work with you on the issue.
We too are experiencing the same issue that others have commented on here.
I just installed Online Family on my children's PCs and the curfew timers seem to be all messed up and dysfunctional. In addition to the timezone issue mentioned in another post (with only one PC; the others all show correct times) we have the issue where even first thing in the morning our children will see they only have something like 16 minutes remaining when they first log in.
The other strange thing is if they don't actually check the minutes remaining they can keep using the PC for considerably longer than 16 minutes - BUT still typically much less than the allocated hours. For example if I allow 2 hours on a week day the system may say they only have 16 minutes first thing in the morning and they will actually be able to use a total of 1 hour (but not all 2) before the lockout window shows up and they get logged out.
Each and every day I have had to manually override the allowance on each PC to give them the correct number of hours.
Another strange part to this is if they keep logging themselves back in they can often get another 30 minutes or so before being logged back out. If they check remaining time though they will immediately be logged out.
I can't think of anything that could be causing this issue. Both of their PCs were running Norton Internet Security 2010 with Parental Controls installed. One of them I first attempted (unsuccessfully) to use add/remove programs to uninstall parental controls and then (unsuccessfully) uninstall NIS2010 before installing NIS2011 and Norton Online Family (installing the new version "seemed" to clean up the remaining components of NIS2010). On the other PC I simply installed NIS 2011 over top of NIS2010 with Parental Controls installed (this time I did disable NIS password protection first - thinking this might have been why add/remove was unable to uninstall 2010 properly) and it "seemed" to automatically uninstall Parental Controls and NIS2010 prior to installing NIS2011. I then manually installed Norton Online Family on each PC and set them up.
Great... as I typed this last bit my youngest daughter just came to me in tears. She just tried to log into her PC for the very first time today and Online Family immediately popped up a window showing her time was used up and logged her out. She said she attempted to log in twice and each time she was immediately logged out.
Why is this happening? What is "using up their time" without them using their PCs at all? It doesn't seem to matter if they leave themselves logged in (as they usually do) or if they actively log out when they are done. Note I have their PCs configured to automatically log in to their accounts when the PCs are booted and they PCs go to sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity. Our children typically click the "sleep" button on their PCs to put them to sleep when they are done using them (without actually logging out first). Note though that last night I did log my oldest daughter out before putting her PC to sleep and today first thing in the morning it showed she had 16 minutes remaining. In her case she is actually still using her PC now and I suspect she has actually now used MORE than the 2 hours allocated to her. She says she has been automatically logged out once today after checking available time, but as long as she doesn't check she is able to keep using her PC (this time - yesterday she got logged out and couldn't get around things until I typed in my name and password to give her more time).
Please uninstall/reinstall Norton Safety Minder to see if it helps. If not, please let us know. I'd like to setup a remote desktop access and work together with you on this issue. You're welcome to send me a private message or an email for details. You can find my email address at http://community.norton.com/norton/profile?user.id=15038
