Windows sometimes gives the user too many freedoms, and if you're the one repairing family computers that end up with all sorts of horrors installed, you know exactly what we mean. Windows does offer several restriction mechanisms for existing profiles, but managing them is painfully cumbersome. Hard Configurator provides a small interface that reduces enabling those mechanisms to a couple of clicks.
"When in doubt, don't." It's a phrase we've repeated to the point of boredom in the computing world, yet few users follow it faithfully. For the sake of our computer's integrity, it's better to miss an opportunity than to invite disaster. Most learn this the hard way, through full Windows reinstalls, lost data, and above all, a lot of time and money. There are, of course, important differences between "discovering" and "learning". Many users know exactly what can happen, yet still don't change how they use the system. In such cases, maybe the best thing is to activate certain restrictions on Windows profiles...
... and that brings us to Hard Configurator. Basically, it provides an alternative interface to enable restrictions with a single click, saving you the hassle of editing the Registry and Group Policies. Some of the more aggressive options fall under "software restriction policies", which limit the execution of certain programs by executable path, hash, and extensions. Hard Configurator also disables PowerShell execution (something we've already touched on with Windows 10 Cloud), prevents launching programs with administrator privileges or from removable drives, and blocks untrusted fonts in Windows 10, among other things.
Hard Configurator has potential, but it comes with a few sharp edges. During my tests, I encountered several interface errors, including completely blank help sections. On first run, I was greeted with a simple "Yes/No" dialog with no additional information, and after a leap of faith, I found it was asking if I wanted to create a restore point. All the advanced details are available in a 33-page PDF. In short, Hard Configurator is useful and easy to use, but it requires some getting used to.
