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I have my someones computer that I regularly fix up for him, usually because the people come and download illegal programs and porn. I'm getting really tired of it and am looking for a way to whitelist a very small list of programs, firefox, word, etc, that can run, and nothing else. I found the AppLocker for the corporate world, but is there anything similar for a family computer?

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To stop people installing pretty much anything set them up a user level account rather than an admin level account. If they insist on letting others use their computer then can give this account out.

A more drastic way would be to set up a virtual machine which could be wiped and restored as necessary.

However, neither of these would stop the downloading of the files themselves.

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It will also not stop some portable applications like from PortableApps.com – Andrew Redd Jul 25 '10 at 23:51
@Halpo - you're right it won't. But setting up your users with standard accounts is still the first step. – Joel Coehoorn Jul 26 '10 at 0:57
AppLocker is a much tighter sandbox than just running LUA. It prevents untrusted code from executing at all. You can control the execution of binaries, DLL loading, scripts and installers. That means that malware targeting the user profile rather than going admin permissions will not execute. AppLocker is a really cool security feature and it's the main reason to prefer Enterprise and Ultimate SKUs. I'd like to see MSFT put AppLocker in all SKUs, enable it by default. They need to put a simpler management interface on it for the home user, though. – Brian Reiter Dec 1 '10 at 10:55
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Look into Windows SteadyState

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Unfortunately, SteadyState is incompatible with Windows 7. – TuxRug Jul 26 '10 at 2:54
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After trolling around in the settings I found the Parental Controls actually allow for both a white list and black list, but it seems that the settings are a little time consuming to set up. But you can only set up the controls for a regular user.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Prevent-children-from-using-specific-programs

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