It’s common knowledge that the 32-bit version of Windows 7 was able to preview PDFs effortlessly.

The same cannot be said with newer computers which run the 64-bit version of Windows 7 albeit with a powerful processor. And it’s not very different with Windows 8 either.

If one would ask “Why?”, you’d be hard pressed to find the logic behind Microsoft’s decisions.

That said, there are solutions for the 64-bit version of Windows 7 and in particular, we’re talking about Vivid Document Imaging’s “PDF Preview for Windows 7”.

Once you install it, you’ll find that previews of your PDF documents are immediately available. You can also preview the PDF in the Windows Explorer Preview pane…

Of course, there are issues that crop up during its installation since it asks you if you want to place a shortcut on your desktop. Even if you decline, it will place not one but three shortcuts which you can easily delete, of course.

But that’s not all, the program will add its own PDF Viewer which is simply called PDF Viewer but will also tell Windows to make it the default program for .pdfs files. You can change the default viewer back to the one you want.

However, if you choose Adobe Reader, PDF Preview will not show thumbnails of the PDF documents but you will still be able to preview the documents using the Windows Explorer preview pane.

Of course, if Foxit is your preferred viewer, then you won’t have any problems. Yet it must be said that this program still does not work with Windows 8.