About a week or so ago I posted a thread titled Use Timer - a project. The idea was for piece of code that could be activated by a parent from a screen icon and which would then start a timer - and shutdown the machine at the end of the timer run.
Escapee very kindly pointed me in the direction of the program AutoIT and provided some code intended to do the job I wanted. After a bit of fiddling with the code it WORKS A TREAT.
LOTS of big thanks to Escapee
Junior has to ask me to log him onto the machine ('cos I will not give him the XP password) and at the same time I activate the timer for whaterver time seems appropriate for the prevailing circumstances eg proximity of meal times, bed time, homework starting etc.
One day he will be bright enough to work out WHY his machine seems to randomly shut down. Actually, I would dealy like him to acquire sufficient IT skills to work it out. For someone doing A level IT he shows a remarkable ineptitude and lack of understanding.
If anyone is interested I will update the previous thread with the AutoIT code that I am using