There are lots of good things on the Internet and some that are not so good. I don’t
want to infringe on someone else’s free speech but I also don’t think that means I
have to read or see everything that is put on the Internet. Also I have children and
I believe that there is a lot of content that is not appropriate for them. As such
I have used filtering software for a long time. Earlier this year I upgraded to 64-bit
operating systems on some of my machines and the software I had been using wouldn’t
run so I asked around for other suggestions on what software others use to filter
content. I settled on using Windows Live Family Safety (mainly because it is free
and runs on 64-bit Vista). It has been working fine for me and my family until last
week.
For some strange reason I started getting error 80210079 when trying to approve web
sites for myself or for all users. I went through the normal dance of trying to search
for information, repair the installation, and remove and install the Windows Live
Essentials software. All to no avail. I couldn’t find anything on support.microsoft.com
or by using several search engines. I decided to blog about it just in case someone
else is getting the same error.
I have my personal settings set as strict at my youngest child just so I am not a
hypocrite and asking them to go through something that I am not willing to do also.
I also have other Live IDs so I changed the logged in user for the family safety filter
and the error went away. I dug a little deeper and figured out that because I was
essentially white listing all of the web sites I visit I had 500 approved sites on
my primary Live ID and fewer (around 70) on the one that wasn’t giving me error 80210079.
I tried deleting a few sites from my primary account and it stopped giving me the
error when I approved new sites. I deleted a lot of sites that I don’t regularly visit.
It appears that Windows Live Family Safety has a limit of 500 sites in the approved
list. This isn’t a problem for my children since they seem to go to the same sites
(less than 100) most of the time but I will have to remember this when I get back
up to the magic 500 number.
