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How to fully uninstall Windows Photo Viewer from Windows 10? It makes me mad.

I deleted directory Windows Photo Viewer both from C:\Program Files (x86) and C:\Program Files but it keeps opening my files anyway.

When I try to find out executable file location thru Task manager

enter image description here

it gives me C:\Windows\System32\dllhost.exe.

What is the proper way of uninstalling?

Suncatcher
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  • You mean the UWP app called Photos or the application Windows Photo Viewer (that is the default on W7)? Check this out: https://www.howtogeek.com/225844/how-to-make-windows-photo-viewer-your-default-image-viewer-on-windows-10/ – CaldeiraG Dec 16 '19 at 07:56
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    He means Windows Photo Viewer. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/05/Windows_Photo_Viewer_Icon_on_Windows_7.png – Mr Ethernet Dec 16 '19 at 08:01
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    Windows Photo viewer in actual is triggered by a DLL file. It is not a program. It appears that you have some sort of malware- have you checked for the same? – Xboxonecontroll Dec 16 '19 at 08:48
  • it is a program no matter how it is triggered, I have no malware – Suncatcher Dec 17 '19 at 03:38
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    Windows photo viewer keeps hijacking default photo app. I want it wiped off the face of my computer, can I make NortonAV consider it a virus and delete it even if MS decides to re-install automatically? – user3015682 Jul 04 '20 at 15:28

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Step 1: remove the DLL, preferably together with the install dir. In my case, PhotoViewer existed on both paths:

c:\Program Files\Windows Photo Viewer
c:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Photo Viewer\

These directories and their contents were owned by TrustedInstaller, so I could not delete them using administrator privileges, because... well, because that's how MS thinks ownership and priviliges should work.

So I had to set the ownership of these dirs to Administrators and then give full permissions to Administrators (recursively). (There are pretty good guides on how to do this on the Internet, so I won't bore you with that.)

After that, I only managed to remove the exe and dll files from here, de en-US etc. localization dirs remained, with all the *.mui files in them. Not elegant, but the general goal of removing PhotoViewer.dll was still achieved.

Step 2: clear associated keys from the registry.

regedit.exe > Edit > Find > PhotoViewer.dll

I had a single hit. Again I had to assume ownership and give full access to Administrators. After that, I managed to remove the key containing the path to the dll.

Now my original problem is fixed, the deprecated and buggy Windows Photo Viewer won't stand in the way of using Microsoft Photo Viewer by default.

Attila Csipak
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  • I wasn't able to complete the second step, number of nodes related to PhotoViewer.dll in `HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT` are not possible to delete, anyway thanks for the comprehensive approach – Suncatcher Dec 20 '22 at 00:30
  • I got probably 20 hits. You have to take ownership in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT as only TrusterInstaller has access by default. You can then change permissions to full for Administrators and delete. – munrobasher Mar 16 '23 at 13:16