My sister has gotten to the point where chatting is seriously affecting her schoolwork. Rather than my mum banning her from it and making herself even more of a bad guy than she already is (sister’s 15, probably nuff said :)) I suggested I disable it. Oops! It doesn’t work anymore. Must be the network. Problem solved.
What I’ve done right now is enable a proxy server and point it at a non-existant address. Problem with that is that a) it tells you what’s wrong when you try and connect and b) she’ll probably figure out that to fix it all she has to do is disable the proxy servers.
What I’d like to do is something harder to fix, but not something that will disable the program altogether so she trys reinstalling. Any ideas?
Create usernames, and get a program that allows you to restrict her user’s access to ANY program.
Our school currently has it set up so that I can’t use my computer, control panel, games or anything from a CDrom - leaving only things essential for schoolwork (ie Office and Internet Explorer - which itself has a password and is heavily restricted). I can’t install or remove programs; I’m limited to creating files via save in Office, and I can only ever access thse files through open in Office. This allows me to still work, but completely stops me from procrastinating or wrecking the thing.
Alternatively, if you’re on an hourly plan, make her pay and see if she starts moderation!
You could just rename the folder Messenger is in to ‘Meessenger’ or something like that. Renaming the folder prevents it from working (it’s what I’ve done), and changing it to a similar name means she may not notice it if she goes looking for it.