Alberto Escobedo's Random Thoughts : Windows Vista

Replacing notepad in Vista

albertoe — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 16:08:00 GMT

One of the frist things that I do whenever I install a new version of Windows is to replace Notepad with Notepad2 as I find this to be a much more powerful editor.

There are some articles on how to do it with Windows XP and Windows 2003 but I could not find any info on how to do it for Windows Vista and this is what you need to do.

Rename Notepad2.exe to notepad.exe.
Find c:\windows\notepad.exe and c:\windows\system32\notepad.exe and set the owner to ‘Administrators’, and grant Administrators full control.
Using Windows Explorer, drag and drop the renamed notepad2.exe to c:\windows and c:\windows\system32.
Optional replace the permissions on the new notepad.exe to Read & Execute and Read.

Adding notepad to the SendTo menu list in Vista

albertoe — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 15:45:00 GMT

If you are like me I often find that I want to look at a file using notepad which might be associated with some other application. For example a batch file, an .config , or an XML these are typically associated with something else, but I want to view them with notepad to troubleshoot or edit them. To make it easy to open these files quickly from windows explorer I add notepad to my “Send To” menu. All you need to do is to add a shortcut to the application that you want add to the following directory.

In Windows XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\[LogonId]\SendTo

In Vista
C:\Users\[LogonId]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo