Onecare Family Safety blocks internet access after uninstall solution
N8 November 6th, 2008View/Print PDF Version
Well, this is the worst problem I have ever had to deal with that wasn’t a virus…and the lack of a cleanup tool from Microsoft on this issue makes it worse…because that is all that is needed.
“The Family Safety Service has been disabled. Please ask the administrator for this computer to enable it. Until that’s done, you will not be able to browse the internet.”
After running into this issue I scoured the net in search of a solution, looking for “Family Safety Service has been disabled”, but all I found were answers that didn’t work, including responses from MS in their forums. The common solutions were to re-register a dll file, uninstall and reinstall the program, and a slew of others that didn’t work.
So here is what I did to fix this problem, but this involves editing the registry so do it at your own risk!
Also, I am going by memory since I don’t have the computer in front of me, but it is fairly simple.
- Open up regedit, if you don’t know how you shouldn’t be opening it to begin with…get someone who knows to help you out. The registry can screw up your computer if you delete or edit the wrong thing.
- Once there press F3 which opens up the search box, then type in fsssvc. Delete (or export the key and then delete, if you want to play it safe)the key or string that fsssvc is in. If the key only has to do with Family Safety then you can probably safely delete the whole key instead of the string, use your best judgment on this. You can continue to press F3 to search next through the rest of the registry removing those entries.
- Next do a search for fss_fltr and do the same as you did above by deleting the keys/strings.
- Next search for family and delete only the entries that have to do with Family Safety. There are other entries in there that have family in them that don’t have to do with Family Safety, you can leave those.
- To be sure you can also do a search for fss. You will get many fss finds that have nothing to do with Family Safety, but it is what I did to be certain I removed all things relevant to Onecare Family Safety.
After this is done you can reboot and see if the port is still being blocked preventing internet access. If for some reason the net is still broken get our Winsock reset tool in the downloads section and run that.
Vista users can us the Vista Winsock Reset tool in Advantage-PC Fix if you are still having trouble.
After this is done you can reinstall it, if you dare, or leave it out.
If you still have issues comment below and I may be able to help out.
Many thanks! I’ve been looking for a way round this problem and your method has worked!!!!!
Gawd bless you Sir!
AN error message is still popping up looking for the uninstalled programme which I presume is because not all registry entries have been removed (?)…. but it has allowed access to the net.
Yes, you may have missed something related to Family Safety. When I went through and did this there were no error messages afterwards. If you can post the error I may be able to help.
This is making my nose bleed. Several key entries cannot be deleted. I’ve been doing this in safe mode since the first time it failed. I’m ussually loathe to say I’ve failed a simple task but I don’t believe this is a simple task.
Do you have administrator privileges? I was able to do the above without running into any permissions issues with the registry. I think the key, um keys are the ones that have to do with fss_fltr but I am just speculating.
Very nice site