It always happens that, while doing some important work on our computer, we tend to open our social networking accounts and just forget about work. Social Networks are very useful but can be as addictive as opium, if not more! Blocking them on your work time can help you a lot. So here we have a free tool that can temporarily block some of the websites that distract you while doing your work.
Cold Turkey Distraction Blocker software
Cold Turkey Distraction Blocker is a free and open-sourced website blocking tool that temporarily blocks addicting websites. The software comes with a list of popular websites that you can block, and you can even add custom websites that you want to block. The popular sites you can block are Facebook, X, YouTube, Hotmail, MSN, Wikipedia, eBay, CollegeHumor, AddictingGames, Reddit, FailBlog, StumbleUpon, etc.
To use the freeware, you simply need to select the websites from checkboxes or add custom websites using the textbox control. The next step is to choose when the website should be blocked. With this tool, you can block a website for a maximum of 7 days. You can choose the desired date and time. Time can be either in 12Hr or 24Hr format. If you decide to block yourself out from, say, Facebook, and later on change your mind, you will have to wait until your time expires. If you try some tricks to unblock yourself, it will reset your time to block you for an extra week.
Once done, you have to click on ‘Go Cold Turkey’ button and if you want to update a Facebook status about what you are doing, then you can simply click on the checkbox above the button. The program is easy to use and includes no difficult steps.
Cold Turkey is very useful for people like me as it keeps an eye on me and doesn’t allow me to use my social accounts during my work time. But remember once you’ve blocked a website, you can’t unblock it till the time expires. You cannot open Task Manager and end the process. Nor can you uninstall the program while it’s running. If you think of changing the system time to trick the program, forget it! So be careful while using this software.
Uninstall or Remove Cold Turkey Distraction Blocker
Cold Turkey cannot be stopped easily as it is not stoppable from the system tray or the Task Manager. If you are unable to stop the process via Task Manager and/or then uninstall the program via Control Panel, follow these recommended steps for uninstalling Cold Turkey:
Open the Task Manager. Under the Processes tab, click “View processes from all users” near the bottom of the window. End a process called “kctrp_srv.exe” and exit the Task Manager.
Next, open its installation directory C:\Program Files\ColdTurkey. Open ct_settings.ini with Notepad and find the line: “done=no” and replace it with “done=yes“.
Then Save. Wait for Cold Turkey to tell you your time is up, then click “Leave me alone”.
Close Notepad. Now go to C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc and delete the Hosts file.
Now uninstall Cold Turkey via the Control Panel. Restart your browsers and check if you can visit the blocked sites.
Cold Turkey describes the actions of a person who abruptly gives up a habit or addiction rather than gradually easing the process through gradual reduction – hence the name for this software!
Cold Turkey Cold Turkey Distraction Blocker download
Click here to download Cold Turkey Distraction Blocker Free for Windows. The free version offers the following features:
- Block websites
- Website Exceptions
- Timed block
- Statistics.
Cold Turkey Writer is another freeware from this developer that may interest you.
