Free PDF Viewer for Windows - How to remove

Free PDF Viewer for Windows is a program that gets detected as potentially unsafe by some antivirus scanners. The reasons for this include Free PDF Viewer for Windows offering to install spyware for you, as well as its the default uninstaller leaving behind a pop-up that appears every time you log in.

About Free PDF Viewer for Windows:

Type of threat	Potentially unwanted program (PUP).
Problems with Free PDF Viewer for Windows	Shady and unverifiable reviews, bundling of a spyware program, persistent pop-ups.
How the installation works	Free PDF Viewer for Windows offers additional programs during setup, after being installed, it urges you to download an update, if you uninstall it, it shows a pop-up urging you to reinstall it.
How to remove Free PDF Viewer for Windows	Delete it and other unwanted programs yourself or with an anti-malware program, such as Spyhunter, find and delete leftover malicious files.

Free PDF Viewer for Windows

Not the best PDF reader

Free PDF Viewer for Windows is a mostly harmless program that tries to get you to install some potentially unwanted programs. I found it while I was looking at Free Audio Editor. These programs seem related.

Here are some problems with Free PDF Viewer for Windows:

• On its home site, there are unverifiable testimonials and review quotes.
• It’s claimed to be free, but there are hints of it being priced at $29.90.
• It bundles a few optional offers, which can result in unwanted programs being installed on your computer.

Free PDF Viewer for Windows’ installer is detected by quite a few antivirus scanners (Virustotal.com). There are good reasons for this.

Confusing feature descriptions and unverifiable reviews

The name “Free PDF Viewer for Windows” is so generic that it’s hard to search for information about it, it almost seems intentional. And its feature descriptions are really stretching. For example, the idea of setting Free PDF Viewer for Windows as your default PDF viewer is presented like it’s an impressive feature, even though it’s just a thing that Windows PCs can do for any program. This makes me a bit suspicious of Free PDF Viewer for Windows’s quality.

Free PDF Viewer for Windows has these quotes from five-star reviews but no links nor any way to verify them. When I search for these reviews, I find nothing. Did Free PDF Viewer for Windows make those reviews up? Did it quote them inaccurately? Or maybe the reviews did exist, but they’re so old that they aren’t available anymore?

Whatever it is, reviews and testimonials should be verifiable. Otherwise, they’re useless.

A potentially unsafe program

Bundling

Besides the over-the-top description and shady review quotes, there’s another problem: bundling other programs.

The reason that Free PDF Viewer for Windows is free to use is that it bundles optional offers. This can cause some people to accidentally agree to install these offers. Worse, if you stop the installation halfway-through, the offers might get installed anyway, which is just terrible.

One of these offers is the infamous RelevantKnowledge. This is a data collection program, a sort of spyware. It monitors your activities online and displays survey pop-ups.

Update pop-ups

Another problem is the PDF Viewer for Windows update. After installing PDF Viewer for Windows, it asked me to download an update. This update suggestion is a little misleading, as it is not labeled with PDF Viewer for Windows’ name. It looks as though it’s imitating a system warning.

This update for PDF Viewer for Windows is not really an update, but a separate file that, if you uninstall PDF Viewer for Windows, remains on your computer. PDF Viewer for Windows adds this file to your startup programs and, if it notices that you removed PDF Viewer for Windows, it shows a pop-up in the lower right corner of your screen. This pop-up encourages you to download PDF Viewer for Windows again.

How to remove Free PDF Viewer for Windows

You can sue an anti-malware program like Spyhunter to scan your computer and check it for malware. Not just PDF Viewer for Windows and RelevantKnowledge, but other programs that you might not know about. As potentially unwanted programs are not always malicious, not all security scanners detect them. So, select the antivirus scanner by reading about its features.

You can delete PDF Viewer for Windows yourself in the Control Panel, remove its items from your Startup in Task Manager, and delete the leftover files in C:/Program Files or C:/Program Files (x86).

Automatic Malware removal tools

How to remove Free PDF Viewer for Windows using Windows Control Panel

Many hijackers and adware like Free PDF Viewer for Windows install some of their components as regular Windows programs as well as additional software. This part of malware can be uninstalled from the Control Panel. To access it, do the following.

• Start→Control Panel (older Windows) or press Windows Key→Search and enter Control Panel and then press Enter (Windows 8, Windows 10).
• Choose Uninstall Program (if you don't see it, click in the upper right next to "View by" and select Category).
• Go through the list of programs and select entries related to Free PDF Viewer for Windows . You can click on "Name" or "Installed On" to reorder your programs and make Free PDF Viewer for Windows easier to find.
• Click the Uninstall button. If you're asked if you really want to remove the program, click Yes.
• In many cases anti-malware programs are better at detecting related parasites, thus I recommend installing Spyhunter to identify other programs that might be a part of this infection.