Comments on: Replace Notepad in Windows 7

By: Victor

Victor — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 09:44:12 +0000

Thanks For great help, normally original notpad was not working on win 7 ultimate, now with this methode working well.

By: AXE_09

AXE_09 — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:39:43 +0000

Worked like a charm on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit. Been searching for this for ages.

Thanks a lot. =) ;p

By: Logman

Logman — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:32:33 +0000

How do you get the shortcut to say Notepad again – it still says Notepad2 after you do what you suggested in the previous post

By: adam

adam — Sun, 30 May 2010 06:51:39 +0000

I don’t think changing the actual Notepad.exe file is actually the best idea. In Notepad++, you can simply go to the Options dialog and click the File Associations tab and choose the files to open with Notepad++.
But just a quick warning about associating files with Notepad++: Don’t associate EXE, BAT, CMD, VBS or other command prompt or Windows script files with Notepad++ or the batch code or script inside the file will not run, instead it will show the code in Notepad++.

An alternative to what i mentioned above is to simply right-click any file in a folder dialog (or an open or save file dialog box) and click “Edit With Notepad++” (or similar). This may not work if you didn’t turn this setting on in Notepad++’s installer program.

And for those who want to revert back to Windows Notepad, log on as an administrator, and navigate to C:\Windows and delete notepad.exe (be careful; don’t delete notepad.exe.backup or you will lose notepad forever), and rename notepad.exe.backup to notepad.exe.
Do the same in C:\Windows\System32 and C:\Windows\syswow64 (it does not matter if one of those folders do not exist on your computer.)

By: Richard Schieck

Richard Schieck — Fri, 14 May 2010 15:12:28 +0000

Hello everyone.

I took the suggestion of TUPACALYPSE187 and everything seems to have worked fine in my Windows 7 64bit machine except that I still have the same problem.

Notepad++ is still not my default text editor and now neither is notepad.

Also I cannot choose to make either one my default because the box to check for that is grayed out and always has been.

Is there an alternative that is similar to notepad++ that is any good and can be configured easier than notepad++?

How do I change back what the .bat file did?

By: logman

logman — Fri, 14 May 2010 14:11:34 +0000

Works great, but items that I open through ‘Edit’ on the right click menu are not responding to my config file for Notepad 2 (different font size etc) however, if I open a file through ‘Open With’ and select Notepad2 it uses the config settings.

Can something be added to make the default right click menu ‘Edit’ respond to the config file that’s in the Notepad2 folder?

By: Eli

Eli — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:02:28 +0000

I would recommend adding the word PAUSE on its own line at the end of the batch file so the user can see that the files were copied properly. Otherwise, the command prompt closes and you may never see a access denied error.

Another thing to warn the user, is that ALL instances of notepad must be closed before you start the procedure.

Additionally, you may want to add the line
copy notepad2.ini c:\windows\notepad2.ini
or something similar to have notepad2 start saving your preferences.

Finally a note to the user…the batch file MUST be stored in the notepad2.exe directory or else it will not work.

Thank for the tip!

By: jack smith

jack smith — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 22:31:23 +0000

Why can I not read documents from a flash stick used on windows 7 on my computer windows XP?

By: JMW

JMW — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 03:50:18 +0000

Are you kidding? It’s 2010 and I have to do all this to replace notepad with edlin? I suppose I’ll cave and hack my way through it because it has to be done.

I do appreciate the post though. Don’t get me wrong.

Is there some reason why the developers of notepad 2 and ++ et al don’t have a setup program that would allow us to replace notepad.exe with their version on on XP, Vista or 7?

By: Kai

Kai — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 05:15:09 +0000

how do you uninstall it if you install notepad2 this way? also is there a way to remove (Administrator) next to the title?

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:52:46 +0000

I had to add myself to security group for notepad.exe. I also had to do rename notepad2.exe to notepad.exe in the extracted source dir. Then perform an additional replace using this file in for the notepad C:\Windows.

By: mosaic

mosaic — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:42:15 +0000

I usually add Notepad2 as a file association for a few file types, but *not* as the default one – to avoid messing up Windows. I have run into a problem with this:

First I added several file associations with Notepad2.EXE in a “Program Files” subfolder – this worked. Unfortunately when I tried to change the settings I was unable to save them (no permission to the INI file, and no option to proceed as admin).

Then I tried adding a TXT file association with Notepad2.EXE in a different folder, i.e. not under “Program Files”. Windows 7 does not let me add the file association – it lets me browse to the Notepad2 folder and select the EXE file but when I click OK in the OpenFile dialog, Notepad2 is not added to the list of programs to choose from.

By: DrLaban

DrLaban — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:35:05 +0000

By chance I tried one more thing. Since the dialog also mentioned “You might not have the right permission…” I made one last effort and see if I could figure this one out. When I checked the permissions of Notepad.exe in C:\Windows it only contained Administrators. I added myself to that list with the permissions of Full Control and whaddya know, it works!

By: DrLaban

DrLaban — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:20:52 +0000

Hmm, I’va succeeded in doing all these steps, but as soon as I return UAC to the default setting I get an error; “Windows cannot find the file specified…” every time I try to start Notepad2 or when clicking a txt-file. What’s up with that?

Also, since I’ve been trying and retrying, the backup of notepad.exe has been replaced by Notepad2.exe (running them consecutively a couple of times in a row is not a good idea), is anyone willing to share a Notepad.exe in 64-bit version, I’d appreciate it. At the moment I can’t edit txt-files in any real usable way, so I’d like to be able to at least revert to the old way.

By: Brooks

Brooks — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 11:27:58 +0000

Thanks I have replaced StNotepad in my multiouch Tablet PC. I was looking for a notepad with Multitouch feature, to edit text in tablet mode. I found that StNotepad 2 got this feature with very common and useful gestures. Now I can edit text only with fingers no need of keyboard, mouse and stylus also. And more over it got its own special semitranparency, it’s awsome in Windows7.