As an avid reader of many web development blogs, I came across this open source script written on how to control  your child’s use of certain programs. Whether it be surfing the web, chatting on AIM, or playing a specific video game. This parent, who is also a programmer, took it upon himself to write a script that would remotely limit the time his son was able to play video games or chat online. The script allows a child to open the program and begins to time how long that application has been open. Once the set time has expired, the application will be forced closed.

Xiangyang Liu says “…like many other teenagers, my son spends too much time play games and chatting with his friends online. Failing to get him to listen to me, I started to write a program that controls his computer…” The program allows you to kill selected programs on another computer if these programs have been running to long. You, as a parent or administrator, has the ability define how long is to long.

Program Specifics:

The programs you want to control are defined in the web.config file, like the following:

<appSettings>
<add key=“GameList” value=“firefox.exe,60;iexplore.exe,60″ />
<add key=“GameDelay” value=“120″ />
<add key=“CheckInterval” value=“15″ />
</appSettings>

As you can see, the value of GameList is a list of semi-colon delimited items. Each item has two parts separated by comma, the first part is the name of executable file, the second the number of minutes you allow the program to run. In this case, the application will kill all Fire Fox and IE processes 60 minutes after they were detected.

The value of GameDelay specifies the number of minutes the user has to wait before they can start a killed program. In the above example, if your child start Fire Fox or IE again, it will be killed again, unless 120 minutes have passed. Then counting will start over again.

The value of CheckInterval specifies how often (number of seconds) the application checks for programs defined in GameList.

The Game Killer

This is an ASP.NET 1.1 web application. You have to install it on the computer you want to control. Here are the steps to install:

1. Unzip the files into a folder on the target machine.
2. Create a new virtual directory pointing to the GameKiller subfolder.
3. If you have more than one versions of .NET frameworks on this computer, make sure the virtual directory is configured to run with .NET 1.1.
4. Change machine.config file of .NET 1.1 framework so that it has the “SYSTEM” privilege. This can be done by finding the ProcessModel element in machine.config, replace value of userName attribute with “SYSTEM”.

Yes, #4 above is necessary because otherwise the application won’t be able to detect and kill other running processes.

Assumptions:

• You are doing this on one of your home computers behind firewall.
• Your computer has .NET 1.1 framework installed and IIS enabled.
• Your child does not have the necessary knowledge and skill to play the same trick on you (yet).

What if the machine you are trying to control does not have IIS? You can enable IIS on Windows XP Media Center Edition or Windows Vista Home Premium Edition. If you have Windows XP Home Edition, there is a way to install IIS on it if you have the Disks for Windows 2000 (I don’t remember the details, you can easily google it).

How do you make sure the above ASP.NET application is running all the time, even after reboot? This is what the included PingClient.exe is for. All you have to do is schedule the following command to run at the start of the computer:

PingClient.exe http://localhost/GameKiller/Ping.asmx

The URL above is pointing to a web service within the ASP.NET application.

(Source: How to kill processes running on a computer in your home)

This is another application in a long line that is trying to help parents regulate and monitor there children’s internet usage. Right now we have the knowledge to stay ahead of our children and control there computer usage. But, as we know children are becoming tech savy quicker and at younger ages, so how long will be before they are limiting our time on the PC?

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