Girlfriend's XP user access dilema

Geckovich · 24 Mar 2009 at 21:03

Ok gents, here's the scenario:

I recently built my girlfriend a computer, which she uses for gaming and Uni work. Her house-mate also uses it, but to a massive extent - she's pretty much abusing the fact that my girlfriend lets her use it in the first place (9 hour left 4 dead sessions only ending at 5am when another house-mate gets up for work and confronts her).

My girlfriend cant say anything, because her house-mate is really (stupidly) easily offended and there is already enough of an "atmosphere", but she wants to stop her being on it so much. Is there any way I can limit the amount of time she can spend on it? Preferably it needs to be subtle, so she thinks it's just the computer messing up rather than me sabotaging it. It has already got to the point that my girlfriend and another house-mate have hidden the DVI lead and said that someone borrowed it to stop her, but obviously this means that they can't use it for legitimate reasons - like the odd tf2 game or essay.

The friend already has her own windows login (non-admin on windows xp home) so I was hoping there would be something I could set in place to stop this madness.

Geckovich · 24 Mar 2009 at 21:37

inph said:
Abuse the hosts file. Steam Auth servers spring to mind.

Can't do that I don't think, the girlfriend plays l4d too so I think it would cripple hers - she just asked me to clarify that it's not for 9 hours a day.

Even though they have different steam accounts and both bought the game, I was under the impression that there would only be one set of game files.

This is going to be harder than I first thought.

Geckovich · 24 Mar 2009 at 22:37

dk345 said:
Windows SteadyState maybe??

I once fiddled around with it on a friends machine, but we installed for a client at work. It gives you a pretty extensive feature set, but I haven't used it for too long a period, so I can't say for sure.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/sharedaccess/default.mspx

It's free if your Windows is genuine, so it could be worth a look?

Of course it's genuine, what do you have me down for

Does look like it could be what I need though.

Geckovich · 25 Mar 2009 at 16:41

Thanks for all the replies so far, you've really given me some food for thought and set me in the right direction.

Sadly the general consensus is also true, no matter what I do it will be discovered soon enough. I wish they girls could just get it all out in the open and tell the "friend" she's no longer allowed on the PC. The trouble is the internet is registered in the name of the "friend" (though they all pay), and she uses the router as a form of control when they argue.

If they tell her outright that she's not allowed on it she'll either: change the router password for a few days, or simply cripple the speeds for everyone by torrenting GB after GB of anime.

Geckovich · 25 Mar 2009 at 19:02

eXor said:
Where do you meet these women?

Me want.

The girlfriend only plays because she saw me play and wanted to join in.

With regards to the house-mate; You really, really don't want to. GRIM. Without being too harsh that's all I can say.

Geckovich · 25 Mar 2009 at 19:18

They already paid in advance. It was an unlimited usage plan so they knew what it would cost over the 12 months.

This girl is ridiculously unreasonable too; with a habit of shrugging off confrontation with feigned illness or hiding in her room.

I'll be installing steadystate soon though so I'll see what I can do for now.