Security Alert: How To Fully Uninstall Quicktime From Your Windows PC

As we reported last week, Windows users have been urged by Trend Micro to remove Apple Quicktime from their PCs. The video player — which Apple has ceased supporting — has been linked to two critical security flaws that won’t be getting patched, ever. If you haven’t got around to killing the program, you need to do it now.

Just because you don’t use Quicktime doesn’t mean it isn’t lurking on your PC’s hard drive. It used to be included in the iTunes installer, which means you might have downloaded it by accident. According to online security firm Trend Micro, the creaky video player is no longer safe due to two critical vulnerabilities which leave machines vulnerable to malware attacks.

The flaws are open-ended and could be used to infect PCs with malicious code under the guise of an official update. With Apple washing its hands of Quicktime on Windows, there are no security updates coming to address the issue.

“The only way to protect your Windows systems from potential attacks against these or other vulnerabilities in Apple QuickTime now is to uninstall it,” Trend Micro warned in a statement.

“In this regard, QuickTime for Windows now joins Microsoft Windows XP and Oracle Java 6 as software that is no longer being updated to fix vulnerabilities and subject to ever increasing risk as more and more unpatched vulnerabilities are found affecting it.”

If you have Apple’s Quicktime video player on your Windows PC, now is the time to uninstall it. While there currently aren’t any active attacks against the aforementioned vulnerabilities, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future. Stay vigilant.

Here’s how to uninstall, courtesy of Apple’s official support page:

Uninstall QuickTime 7 for Windows

Before you uninstall

If you’re using a QuickTime 7 Pro registration key, you might want to save the key before uninstalling QuickTime 7. It’s in the Register tab of QuickTime Player preferences (Edit > Preferences).
 
If you’re not sure whether a program requires QuickTime, contact the program’s developer. Most recent media-related programs for Windows—including iTunes 10.5 or later—no longer use QuickTime to play modern media formats. These programs either play the media directly or use the media support built into Windows.
 
Uninstalling QuickTime 7 also removes the legacy QuickTime 7 web plug-in, if present. Websites increasingly use the HTML5 web standard for a better video-playback experience across a wide range of browsers and devices, without additional software or plug-ins. Removing legacy browser plug-ins enhances the security of your PC.

How to uninstall

Uninstall QuickTime 7 from Control Panel, as you would other programs on your PC. When following Microsoft’s instructions for uninstalling programs, choose QuickTime 7 as the program to uninstall.
 
Or use Windows Search to find “Uninstall QuickTime,” and start the process that way.