Voice chat stopped working for my friend, when he logs in and presses J it says: this feature is disabled due to your parental controls or privacy settings.
He is over 80yrs old so I helped him contact Blizz and they “allegedly” turned that off.
We tried again, it still says: this feature is disabled due to your parental controls or privacy settings. So I helped him check his privacy settings and turned them all to public, it still says: this feature is disabled due to your parental controls or privacy settings. We know it is not either of those.
Now I am being told to make sure no addons are conflicting with it, and I am sure he does not have any addons because he would not know how to load one if he knew what one even was…
Now CS is trying to shut down my ticket by giving me a list of things to check which are basically:
If you have parental controls make sure voice is activated. - We turned that off remember…
Make sure you have the correct WOW settings. - Which settings are we talking about here? The privacy settings? Remember I already checked those and told them I had.
Reset the game settings to default. Pretty sure he has never changed any of themand would not know where to look to find them or even what they mean by this because I sure don’t.
Check your network config to find any issues with your firewall, port, or router. He is online we can group and send whispers do not think this is making him unable to press J and use chat,but I could be wrong
Clse all your apps… we have already stated he does not use apps
(voice chat does not work with bluetooth) Dunno what this means but it was working previous to Plunderstorm and he is using the same equipment…
… and when he presses J it says: this feature is disabled due to your parental controls or privacy settings
I have told CS who he is but all they did was send me the above list and close my ticket
We already went here and I talked it through with him and we got parental settings turned off. We also went through privacy settings and made sure they were all set to public.
Hmm. Completely relog, reload launcher? Restart the computer? Clear the cache? How long had it been between it working and not – were there any changes whatsoever?
If he’s able to, I’d actually have him try another computer just to make sure that’s not a variable.
This ticket has been ongoing for many days so he has relogged several times, including when we changed something, and relogged to see if it worked
There are no other computers in his home. It worked back in Dec but then he was offline till about a month ago due to ill health and nothing has changed at his end.
I could try and talk him through “clearing his cache” but you know that never works…
We did a whole scan and repair, he turned his computer all the way off and back on, and that did not work. It still says: this feature is disabled due to your parental controls or privacy settings
Unless you can tell me an easy way to clear his caches, which does not involve going to files and folders, I am not going to be able to do that…
Is this an actual WoW message, or an OS-level or external message?
I know you said parental, but just trying to verify one or the other.
One could theoretically write a batch file to clear the cache, but that takes a bit of responsibility I’m not sure I want as a random forum personality. XD
Is he logging into the correct account? He doesn’t have any freebie accounts or anything?
When he presses “J” which used to bring up the Guild and Communities chat for him, I created our own community, it instead brings up the message: this feature is disabled due to your parental controls or privacy settings oh his screen in orange writing. He only has one account.
Not going to do anything which might upset his files or folders because he can at least play the game we just cant chat while we do it, which we need to do because i need to be able to talk to him because typing is hard for me and i need to stop to type and he needs to stop to read…
I suspect we’re missing a key bit of information somewhere but unfortunately, I can’t really advise further. Orlyia did confirm – hopefully the correct account – had no parental controls.
Sorry, troubleshooting through an intermediary is always hard ^^ If you’re both comfortable with it, Windows has a facility to grant people temporary, remote access to their system – and your friend seems to trust you. Maybe you can look directly.
Solve PC problems remotely with Remote Assistance and Easy Connect
The remote assistance he is suggesting is standard IT help stuff. He’s not suggesting he do it, he was perhaps suggesting it was an option for you to help your friend. But as that is not something you’re comfortable with, I’d suggest you would consider posting this issue in the Technical Support subforum, here:
Perhaps someone there will be more familiar with this issue. There is a lot of moving parts in modern OS systems, based on what you’ve typed I can think of a number of options. But the way these end up being troubleshot, especially in weird edge cases no one has ever seen before, is you try one option, then the next, and then the next, down the list until you find what the issue is. Sometimes it takes a long time. Also, keep in mind, this is a game of telephone, with you basically telling us what someone else is seeing and has done, which makes it even more difficult. I do wish you good luck.
I double checked their account to make sure that no restrictions were stuck in the on position when the parental controls were disabled. Looking at the account itself, I’m not seeing any restrictions currently.
When I hit “J” to bring up the menu there doesn’t appear to be any notifications of restrictions present. I’m not sure if that means it is clear or not, but it might be worth giving it a try.
Have you gone into Interface Options and make sure he has Voice Chat enabled? It may be that his keybind or Input / Output devices aren’t set properly.
From Options, go to Audio and scroll down to the bottom where it says Voice Chat. Make sure he has his input and output devices set and he can check which key has has set for Push to Talk.
Thank You to everyone who participated in offering suggestions and advice. I really appreciate all your efforts and help in trying to fix this problem. Unfortunately my internet as been out all day but when my friend logs in I will continue this quest
UPDATE:
OK when he tried today it did NOT say anything about parental controls and he says it made a noise like it used to make… woot… and now we are working on his audio settings
also I noticed there is going to be a maintenance on voice chat … Thank You!
UPDATE ii
OK when he presses J it now opens “Guild and Communities” but does not give him the opportunity to join our group only has the option to: Find a community or JOIN or Create community
On my screen he is in our community but he has no golden mike or golden speaker icons
SO I sent him an invite to the group using “invite member”, he said it shows it has 2 members and he clicked to join but nothing changed on his screen: the group is still not in his list
no new version of him is in my list.
So if the invite showed the group has 2 members that is him and me
Any ideas?
Another Update: This has still not been resolved. Our private chat channel is still not showing on his computer, and our Customer Support was basically shut down about 10 times with CS telling me to do something I has previously told them did not work with the final one being turn off all your add-ons : HE DOESNT HAVE ANY ADD-ONS which I have previously explained.
And now the old ticket keeps a little note on my screen which i cant remove unless I mark it as resolved, which it is not… clicks resolved to make it go away, POV useless GM’s “Yay we solved another one”
