unable to download adobe reader, others

Hi.
I am needing to take an online class asap. It only downloads in pdf form. I can't seem to download adobe reader [a program I don't like and deleted years ago]. I tried to download adobe from the adobe site, but it said it couldn't run because it couldn't initialize. [don't know exactly what that means]. I came to this site and clicked on adobe reader lite and nothing at all happened, just a blank yellow khaki page. Then I tried to download pdf2exe. from here and it downloaded, but when I clicked 'run' it said it couldn't because the "set-up files were corrupted".
How can I overcome this?. I would like to download from MajorGeeks as this site always gets it done when others don't but I don't know what to do next. If someone could advise me and also recommend a download I would be very grateful.
Thanks,
sheena

 

Give this program a try its free and supposedly very good
http://foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/

 

Thanks unimatrix. I will try this if the program I finally downloaded has bugs. I downloaded 'coolpdfreader.exe' from this site without problem. But when I ran it it just popped up with no icon one could clic on to bring it up when needed, and it wasn't on the start menu program list. Had no idea where it was, but clicked on something on it and it took me to its company homepage, which gave me a choice to leave as is or add 'coolpdfreadersetup.exe' which I did. That installed it properly, to my mind, and added a desktop icon one could clic on. Just tried it out on a downloaded pdf file and it worked and also printed it out with no problem. Would be interested in the experience of others with this program as I am going to have to do some heavy duty work with it, but not creation of documents.
Sheena

 

Thanks Plodr.
And have you gotten enough experience with these programs yet to know whether they do the main things Adobe does ?

Sheena

 

For PDFs and others I use the free STDU (Scientific and Technical Document Utility). If you want to download a Portable version to have a look at the features before installing click on Download@Author's Site
http://majorgeeks.com/STDU_Viewer_d6727.html

Do you use a download manager/accelerator? If you do try downloading without it, just use the browser inbuilt downloader.
Is your connection and download speed slow, any stalling or freezing when surfing the web? This can also corrupt a download

If there is still no joy, grab a flashdrive, visit a friend :wave and download it there

 

No, madmal, no download manager. Interesting about the slowness possibly causing corruption. I just have a dial-up, no freezing, faster now that I added an accelerator, still slow of course. Thanks.
sheena